John 12 37 thru 50

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“Lord, Who Has Believed Our Message?” John 12:37-50 (February 26, 2017) 37

Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” 41

Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. 42 Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. 44

And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment—what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me.” PRAY Each spring we take several weeks leading up to Easter, the highlight of the church year, to examine the life of Jesus. Jesus Christ is always at the top of the list of the most influential people who have ever lived, and he’s almost universally admired because he is thought of as a teacher of love and peace, he went around healing the sick, and he died on the cross to try and show love to his enemies. But people are also quick to ask this question (they may not put it in these words but this is the question they ask): is Jesus fair? Once people realize that Jesus wasn’t only a teacher of love and peace, but that he’s also a Savior, and when people realize that Jesus himself says that he won’t save everyone, that some people won’t be saved, then they want to know: is Jesus fair? Is the way Jesus saves people fair? Our text for today is one of those passages full of the so-called “hard teachings” and I’ll admit that on the surface it’s easy to read these verses and wonder how you can reconcile these things with Jesus being this man known for his love. But when you dig deeper into the text, and you read these verses in the light of experience and, more importantly, the rest of the Bible, it becomes clear that these verses, far from making Jesus less loving, actually show how loving and gracious and merciful he really is. There is a wideness in his mercy, and this passage shows you the lengths to which God has gone to care for you.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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Three things we’re taught in this passage: first, we are taught about the fairness of hardened hearts. Second, we are taught about the fairness of judgment. Third, we are taught about the fairness of Jesus’ glory. First, the fairness of hardened hearts. 37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: “Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” 39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” John 12:37-40. In verse 40, John quotes from Isaiah 6:10. This passage is quoted four other times in the New Testament. It’s quoted by all four of the gospel writers (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) and Luke puts it on the lips of the apostle Paul at the end of the book of Acts. This is not some obscure passage. It was a key passage to the New Testament writers. The reason they keep bringing this passage from Isaiah up is because they are wrestling with a question: how come the Jewish people did not flock to Jesus as their Messiah? How come Jesus didn’t save them? The Jews of the first century, when Jesus lived, believed fervently that God would send them a Messiah, a deliverer, a powerful man who would drive out all their enemies and restore the nation of Israel to the time of glory they’d had a thousand years earlier under Kings David and Solomon. You can read that part of the history of Israel in the books of 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, and 1 and 2 Chronicles in the Old Testament. Jesus is that Messiah, he was that figure prophesied about in the Old Testament, but the Jewish people overwhelmingly rejected him both during his life and in the following decades. This was a huge problem for the first Christian leaders, because they were all ethnic Jews and it broke their hearts that their brothers and sisters in Israel refused to follow Jesus as the Messiah. You can hear the anguish as John quotes Isaiah in verse 38: “Lord, who has believed our message?” The answer was “practically no one.” Paul writes in Romans 9 that he has “great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart” (Romans 9:2) because his brothers, his fellow Jews, don’t believe Jesus is the Messiah. So, why did the Jews not believe? Because, Isaiah said, God had blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts. It’s worth reading again: For again Isaiah said, 40 “He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them.” Now, we hear that and immediately we think, “That’s not fair!” Isn’t that the first thing you thought when you heard that? “That’s not fair!” Why do we think that? Because we immediately assume that Isaiah is saying that there are some people out there in the world who would believe in Jesus, who would trust him, but God won’t let them believe. He’s deliberately blinded them, he’s kept them from ever knowing him. We read Isaiah and it

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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sounds like God arbitrarily damns people to hell. Just chooses some poor souls out there and hardens their hearts and says, “Ha! You’ll never know me!” That’s not what’s going on. Do you know what this passage actually teaches us? It teaches us about something the theologians call judicial hardening, and what that means is this: there is no one out there who wants to become a Christian who can’t because God has blinded him. That person doesn’t exist, never has existed, never will exist. The Jews John is writing about in John 12 certainly don’t fall into that category. In verse 37 we read that they saw Jesus’ miracles, yet didn’t believe. “Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.” John 12:42-43. These guys did not want to believe in Jesus. They knew who Jesus was, they saw his miracles, and to some degree they knew Jesus was right, but they didn’t want to risk their social position enough to acknowledge Jesus. Judicial hardening means that if you are determined to rebel against God, if you are determined to reject Jesus and keep him out of your life, and you go long enough in that state where it’s clear that you’re never even going to want to change your mind, then God will let you rebel against him. He will give you over to your desires. In Romans 1, Paul takes this principle beyond Jews and applies it to all people who reject Jesus. Paul says that certain truths about God – like his eternal power and divine nature – are plain to everyone on earth. Everyone knows that, but men refuse to acknowledge him as God. Therefore, Romans 1:24 says God gave them over to the desires and lusts of their hearts. We see perhaps the most famous example of this in the book of Exodus, where we read about Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. At this time in history the nation of Israel were slaves in Egypt. God came to Moses in the desert and told him to go to Pharaoh on his behalf and say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go, so that they might worship me in the desert.” But God tells Moses that Pharaoh will not let them go, that God will have to send plagues on Egypt to force Pharaoh’s hand, and in Exodus 4 God actually says, “Watch, Moses, I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.” Then, in chapters 7 and 8, we read that in the midst of his confrontation with Moses, as the plagues begin to tear Egypt apart, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened by the conflict, and then we read that Pharaoh was so stubborn he hardened his own heart. Finally, toward the end of the plagues, we read six times that God does harden Pharaoh’s heart. God essentially says to Pharaoh, “You don’t want to believe in me? You don’t want to bow your knee to me? Fine – I’ll make sure you don’t.” Let’s be absolutely clear about this: there is no one, no one on planet earth ever, who has wanted to believe in Jesus and be saved but God said, “No – instead, I’m going to harden your heart.” Instead, God is fair. He says, “I will not force you to believe in me or have a relationship with me. In fact, I’ll be so fair to you that I’ll do this: once it becomes evident that you will never want to change your mind, I’ll guarantee that you never will. I will personally harden your heart.” Now, that’s a difficult teaching in the Bible, but no one can say, “That’s not fair.” That’s absolutely fair.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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Second, the fairness of judgment. One of the core tenets of the Christian faith is that one day everyone who has ever lived will face judgment. Jesus talks about how we will be judged in verses 47-48. Some of you may have grown up in or have gone to a church at one point where you recited the Apostle’s Creed every week – I was in a church like that once. At one point in the creed it says this about Jesus: “He ascended into heaven, and sat down at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. From thence he shall come to judge the living and the dead.” And of course a lot of people have a problem with a God who judges. They ask, “Why can’t God just love and accept everyone?” We talked about this last week, so I’ll be brief. Of course, God must judge everyone. We certainly believe in people being judged on earth. We make all kinds of necessary judgments. If we own or manage a business, we don’t just hire the first person who walks in the door and fills out an application – we make a judgment. When we are looking to marry someone, we don’t go off with the first person that’s seems interested in us – we make a judgment. We evaluate. When someone breaks the law, we certainly expect the authorities to judge that person against our law. So, I think it’s a bit hypocritical for people to complain about God judging people when we do it all the time as well. So the big question is this: how will God judge people so that it will be done fairly? We know there must be a judgment, but we want that judgment to be fair. So how can it be fair? And it’s at this point that a lot of people say, “It’s easy – I believe God judges people by how they live. All good people go to heaven. No matter your religion, no matter what you believe, if you were a good person and an honest seeker after truth you get to go to heaven when you die.” At first, that sounds fair, right? But, again, when you think about it, it simply could never work. How could you decide who the “good people” are? Do you mean everyone who never murdered? Everyone who never raped? Everyone who never lied? Everyone who never stole more than $10,000 worth of stuff over the course of her life? Everyone who attended church at least eight-five percent of the time? Or some combination of all of it? What would define good? Where would the cutoff be? When my kids were in the younger grades in school and I’d visit them in their classroom, I’d notice the teacher had this color chart to track your behavior of the kids each day. The way it worked was the better you behave the higher you move up on the color chart. The goal is to end the day “on pink,” at the top of the chart. There are nine colors or so on the chart. So, you start off on blue, in the middle of the chart, and if you’re bad you go down the color chart, and if you’re really bad all day you’ll eventually get to red, where they have to call your parents. But if you’re good all day long you get to move all the way up to pink, and go to the treasure box. And I don’t know how those teachers do it but to hear my kids talk about going to the treasure box it’s like they’re talking about drinking from the Holy Grail.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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But, if you don’t get on pink, if you only make it to purple, the next to highest color, you can’t go to the treasure box. Well, they must have a cutoff somewhere. But when it comes to heaven and hell, the idea of a cutoff is impossible. Where would it be? The guy who makes it to pink goes to heaven, but if you’re the poor slob who only managed to get on purple then you’re down in hell with everyone on red? It’s unimaginable. So how can God be fair in judgment? Not by judging our actions. Not by judging our behavior. There’s no way that could be fair, so God won’t do it. God will not judge you according to what you’ve done when it comes to heaven and hell, but he will judge you by your heart. That’s the only way to be fair. “And Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.” John 12:44-46. Now, let’s be clear what these verses don’t mean first. Jesus does not say in these verses that everyone who is claims to be on his team will pass judgment. We’re in the South, we are still in a majority Christian culture down here, so lots and lots of people – maybe ninety percent of Mississippians – would say they believe in Jesus. They would say, “I believe in Jesus. Of course I do. I mean, I’m not a Muslim. I’m not an atheist. Of course, I on Jesus’ team.” And Jesus says, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me.” So, is that all it takes to pass judgment? No, because I’m afraid that for an awful lot of people in our community their belief in Jesus has nothing to do with the heart. Rather, it has everything to do with their culture. They grew up in an environment where it was assumed that the Bible is a holy book, Jesus is the Son of God, that he died on the cross for their sins, that good people confess Jesus as their Lord and Savior so that they can go to heaven when they die. They grew up in a culture where being a part of a church was a seen as a good thing. Now, I for one am so grateful to have been raised in this culture. I love Mississippi. But it does have it’s drawbacks, and one of them is this culture can make you think you’re a Christian when, in reality, nothing has happened to your heart. Your belief is a product of culture, not heart change, and that’s not what’s required. Or, as Jesus says in John 3, it’s easy to think you’re a Christian in this culture when you haven't been born again. It’s easy to think you’re a Christian in this culture because you intellectually subscribe to certain things about Jesus, but your heart is unmoved. And Jesus talked a lot about this phenomenon, because Mississippi today is a lot like Israel was then. Everyone then believed in the God of the Bible. The Pharisees, the very ones Jesus attacked over and over again, certainly would have said they believed in God. But Jesus critiqued that culture by quoting Isaiah and he said: “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; 9 in vain do they worship me … For out of the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, sexual immorality, theft, false witness, slander.” Matthew 15:8-9, 19.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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God is going to be fair when he judges, so he will not add up how many times you obeyed the Ten Commandments. Rather, he will look at the heart and ask, “Is this heart broken by its sin, or is it just proud that it’s on the Jesus team? Is this heart longing to be rid of the sin that still clinging to it after all these years, or is it satisfied, content, thinking that it has everything basically figured out and it's the people around them that need to change? Does this heart want to love me and others more, or just content to love itself?” Are our hearts humbled by what God has done for us through Jesus, or do we continually live like Jesus is an accessory to our lives? Are our hearts self-righteous, or do we know how desperately we need grace? Does your heart see Jesus on the cross and say, “That should be me – that should be me dying for my sins, but Jesus took my place” or not? Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart, and that makes his judgments fair. But more than that, it also makes it possible for God to forgive. If God judged us totally by our works then those of us who started off life on the wrong track would have no hope. There are kids who grow up in environments so rough and depraved that, literally, they aren’t taught right from wrong. They had awful parents, awful schools, were never taken to church. So they go all throughout their childhood and teenage years heaping up sins that the rest of us, because we grew up in a good home, were never tempted to commit. If only the so-called “good people” go to heaven, then the kids who went down to red on the behavior chart by the time they were twelve and are serving time in the state penitentiary by the time they were twenty could never make it up to pink. No, God’s fair – even and especially in his judgment – which we all agree he must make – God is undeniably fair. There’s a wonderful parable Jesus tells in Matthew 20 called the parable of the workers in the vineyard. In it, there’s a landowner who goes and hires some day laborers early in the morning to work his vineyard. He says he’ll pay them one denarius. Then about 9AM he goes and hires more workers, then again at noon he hires some more. Finally, at 5PM, he goes and hires a few more workers. At quitting time, around 6PM, those hired at 5PM received a denarius, so the guys that had worked all day thought to themselves, “Surely we’ll get paid more.” But they don’t – they get the denarius they were promised. So, of course, they get mad. But Jesus puts these words in the landowner’s mouth: “But he answered one of them, ‘Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? 14 Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. 15 Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’” Matthew 20:13-15 (NIV 1984). Do you see how fair Jesus is? Do you see the wideness in God’s mercy? No matter how late your start in believing in him, he longs to bless you. You can pass judgment, no matter what you've done, so long as you trust Jesus. Third, the fairness of Jesus’ glory. After John quotes Isaiah about God hardening the hearts of Israel, he writes this: “Isaiah said these things because he saw his [Jesus’] glory and spoke of him.” John 12:41. Now, what was the glory Isaiah saw? We talked about

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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this a few weeks ago. It’s clear from verse 23 that the supreme hour of Jesus’ glory is when he is dying on the cross. Jesus beaten, bleeding, naked, and dying on the cross is the supreme display of his glory. And the big question of John 12 is: “When you see Jesus dying on the cross, are you drawn to him or not?” The Jews on Jesus’ day were not drawn; they were repelled by the idea of the Messiah on a cross, abased and executed like a criminal. Now, I think it’s important to point out that over the centuries some Christians, even some really important ones like Martin Luther, have used the unbelief of the Jewish people as a reason to do some horrible things to them. It’s one of the darkest stains on the history of the church. It’s sin to mistreat anyone, but I think it’s particularly displeasing to God to mistreat someone because of their race or ethnicity. No one should ever take this passage or any other as a reason to look down on, despise, or hate Jewish people. Still, Isaiah foresaw that he cross was the hour of Jesus’ glorification, yet the Jews would not see it. The question is: do you see it? Only on the cross could Jesus deal with our sins. Only on the cross could Jesus show how God is both just in punishing sin and merciful in forgiving sin. Only on the cross could Jesus save us. That is his glory. Do you see it? Are you drawn to him? Or do you say, “You know, I just don’t see it.” Bertrand Russell was one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the middle part of the twentieth century – he was sort of the Richard Dawkins of his day. He was once asked what he would say if he found himself standing before God on judgment day and God asked him, “Bertrand, why didn’t you believe in me?” And Russell said he would reply, “Not enough evidence, God! Not enough evidence!” And I’ve heard that, too, from several different people who don’t believe. They’ve said, “J.D., Jesus lived two thousand years ago in an obscure part of the world, and he expects me to believe in him now? If he really wanted me to believe in him, why doesn’t he appear in the sky over the Empire State Building or over the White House or over the Kremlin and get all the television cameras on him so his power and effulgence and glory could be broadcast worldwide over all the news channels? Then, I’d believe – he wouldn’t have to stay on earth but a day or two, and then I’d believe. But until then, not enough evidence. I just don’t see it.” Have you ever thought that? It’s okay if you have – I’ve wondered that, too. But Jesus displaying his glory like that would not be fair. Do you know who would be drawn to Jesus if he displayed his glory like that? The powerful, the rich, the influential. If Jesus appeared over Congress and said, “I am Jesus Christ, the Son of God – believe in me!” the first people there would be the lobbyists. They’d be there to help him right the legislation for his new world government. The business leaders, the financial managers, the politicians - they’d flock to Jesus if that happened, attracted to his power, because they flock to power now. They’d be there to there to make sure Jesus knew they were on his team.

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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And do you know who wouldn’t be able to get near Jesus? The poor, the broken, the weak, the despised. They’d see all those powerful, influential people around Jesus and say, “There’s no way Jesus is for me.” Friends, don’t you see – the only way God could come to earth and fairly display his glory to draw all men to himself is on the cross. Jesus doesn’t care if you’re on his team; he wants your heart. When its about the heart everyone – whether you are a beggar in the gutter or a lobbyist on K Street – can be drawn to him, everyone can go to him, so long as they have a heart broken over sin. That’s why Paul says, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’” 1 Corinthians 1:18-19 (NIV 1984). The only time having wealth and power and intelligence is a drawback in this world is when it comes to the cross, because when you have those things you can easily think you don’t need any help. To a heart not broken the message is foolishness. But the one prerequisite for belief in Jesus Christ, for saving faith in Jesus Christ, is a humble heart broken over its own sin. Psalm 149:4: “For the LORD takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation.” Lent starts this week – this Wednesday is Ash Wednesday. And many of you know that in some church traditions it’s a common practice to give up something for that forty day period, as a way focusing on the cross and identifying with the sufferings of Jesus. But here’s what I’d like you to consider doing – take these next several weeks leading up to Easter and focus on how fair and humble Jesus must be. He’s obviously fair – we’ve talked about that for the whole sermon. But he’s humble – Jesus Christ is the God-man, God in the flesh. Yet he humbled himself to become obedient to death on a cross so as to rescue his enemies (not good people, but his enemies) from their sins. Isn’t that humility? Take these next forty days and look at the cross and say, “God, I do not want to be an arrogant, triumphant, haughty Christian – I want to be like Jesus, fair and gentle and humble in heart.” One last thing: all the commentators point out that John 12 is the last time Jesus gives a pubic invitation to follow him. From John 13 forward, Jesus only talks to his inner circle. Jesus cries out in verse 44, as if to say, “Time is running out; don’t wait until it’s too late to make a decision about me.” Is time running out for you? I don’t know. It might be – no one is promised tomorrow. But I do know this: if you’re sitting there in the crowd today and you think, “Hmmm, Jesus – I might need to do something about him, I might need to give my life to him” please don’t wait. Your heart is humble today, but it might start to harden tomorrow. You don’t have the control over your heart that you think you have. Five days from now, five months from now, and certainly five years from now things will be different. Today, believe in Jesus, and believe in the one who sent him. PRAY

© 2017 J.D. Shaw

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