This is a rush transcript.

[00:00:00] I invite you to grab your Bible and open it up with me to John 7. So hopefully you've got a Bible or you can always grab one when you walk in. But, John 7, page 892 if you got one of our Bibles and we're going to start studying this chapter and it's going to take us all the way through Christmas, we're very excited about the setting here. It's just gonna be a great way to introduce Jesus this Christmas season. In fact, last year this time, we had no place to celebrate Christmas. Anybody remember that when we did a Christmas service at the movie theater? Who was there at that service? And yes, I mean, you guys have lasted awesome all the way since the movie theater. Remember that we announced that we got had actually given us this building on that day. I don't know if you guys remember that. I remember I wanted to show that clip of Linus because I thought, well, we're at the movie theater. What better place to show a clip. Right. And they're like, yeah, you guys can totally show that clip. That'll be an extra two thousand dollars to use our screens. That's why we didn't show the clip. That's why we're showing it here now. Now we have now we have screens. Right. You got a building we've got to play since the first time we can be at home for Christmas as a church together. And so we're very excited and we've decided not to some preach some of the usual Christmas text. We've decided that if we just keep going through John Chapter seven, it's going to tell us what we need to hear about Jesus Christ effect. They're going to have a whole argument in this chapter about where Jesus was born, which seems pretty timely. And then on Christmas Eve, we're gonna look at Jesus saying here in this setting, I am the light of the world and that's gonna be a powerful time. And so we want to start diving into it and we want to get the context and see all that's going along. So hopefully you've got your Bible open. And look with me at John.

[00:01:55] Chapter seven, verse one says, after this, Jesus went about in Galilee and he would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him. So we need to do a little bit of review here to start.

[00:02:12] Just in case you haven't been with us or see, in case you might forget, some things that we talk about every once in a while, we just want to review that Galilee is the northern region of Israel and Judea where Jerusalem is. That's the southern region. And Jesus just had this big time after this. Well, in Chapter six, he did this amazing miracle where he took one meal and mostly bread and he started breaking it. Any fed thousands of people. And then he followed that up by saying that he was the bread of life. And there was a lot of conversation. And even though he he was so popular, people were following him. He's handing out free meals to thousands. It says at the end of the last chapter that many turned back from following Jesus.

[00:02:57] Many disciples, they fell away from their faith in Christ because he was saying some hard things like he came from heaven. And he had to give his body for you. And they couldn't handle some of what they were hearing. And so they they fell away.

[00:03:10] So that's what it means when it says after this. That's all that's just happened. Jesus is in Galilee. But then it reminds us he didn't want to go down to Judea, where Jerusalem was, because down there, they weren't just fallen away. They were seeking to kill him down there. It was even worse. And you might need to kind of go back in your mind to Chapter five. In fact, turn there with me, because let's just go back to what happened the last time he was in Jerusalem, down there in Judea. In fact, if you could pull out your hand out there in your bulletin, I don't know if you take notes, we always give you a hand down in case you want to take notes. We actually put the outline of our sermon from John Chapter five, because our passage today is the next time that Jesus goes back into Judea, into Jerusalem. And what Jesus says in our passage is a direct response to his critics who rejected him here in John Chapter five. And if you look just through the chapter, you'll remember that what he did was he healed a man and he healed the man. And here was the controversy on the Sabbath day, the day of rest. And because he did that work on the Sabbath day, he started to get a lot of criticism from the Jewish leaders. And then he began, made it very clear that he was God, that he was one with the father. So look at John, five, 18.

[00:04:36] Here's how it left off with the Jews down in Judea, in Jerusalem is this was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, that wasn't it. He was even calling God his own father. And he was doing it, making himself equal with God.

[00:04:58] They hated how he. Healed the man on the Sabbath. But even worse, they got the point. Jesus was claiming DHT. He was claiming to be God and the Jews in Judea wanted to kill him.

[00:05:12] And so you would think, well, this has kind of been a rough time is to Desart disciples up in Galilee are falling away and the Jews down in Judea want to kill him, while at least he's probably got his family.

[00:05:22] At least they still love him. Right. We'll go back to John Chapter seven. And that brings us into where we're at right now, because it's time to go back down to Judea. There's another feast. Look at verse two. Now, the Jews feast of booths was at hand or sometimes referred to as the Feast of Tabernacles. Now, because it tells us the feast of booze is happening, we know just based on the calendar that there's been six months now from when the feeding of the 5000 happened to the present time. So if you want to write that down, if you're taking notes between Chapter six and Chapter seven is a six month time period here in the Gospel of John. And so it's time to go back down for the feast of booze. Now, there were three feast that all of the Jews would traditionally gather for in Jerusalem, where the temple was to do sacrifices and just go through the three feasts here. One you might have heard of. It's Passover. It's referred to as the feast of unleavened bread. A second feast was the Feast of the Harvest, which later became known as Pentecost. If you're familiar with Acts Chapter two, that's the day that where the church began Pentecost and then the third feast and our month of October would have been a feast, a feast of ingathering, a feast of all the produce maybe of the of the grapes and all the things that had grown up that we were gonna go and we were gonna offer some sacrifices. And it's very detailed how they were supposed to celebrate this feast. And you could write down Deuteronomy 16 or numbers 28 and 29. They get very specific about all of the sacrifices that were supposed to be done by the people during this time. So here's Jesus getting ready with everybody else to go back to Jerusalem for this feast of booze, the Feast of Tabernacles, which is going to be our context for now. A couple months here at the church.

[00:07:14] This feast and his brothers are there and they start talking to him. Look what they say in verse three. So his brother said to him, leave here and go to Judea.

[00:07:26] That your disciples also may see the works you are doing for no one works in secret. If he seeks to be known openly, if you do these things, show yourself to the world.

[00:07:38] I don't know if you can detect it, but there's a little bit of snarky ness in the comments here. I don't know if you've ever had a brother who said something snarky to you before, but that's exactly what's happening here. What are you doing? Puttering around up, hearing Galilee. Your disciples have left you. This is not a happy time for you. Your popularity is waning. Hey, it's feast time. Why don't you go down if you're really the man that you claim to be. And clearly they knew there was something going on with their brother. But look at what it says in verse five four. Not even his brothers believed in him. It anymore believe in and they didn't have the faith to see him as the Christ, the holy one of God and to to worship him to to surrender and give their lives to him. They don't believe that. And so they're challenging him, if you're really who you say you are, why don't you go and show yourself to the world and and kind of get popular again in and kind of do your messiah thing. And there's some snarky it's like a verse six. Jesus said to them, well, my time has not yet come. He's on a different schedule. He's got a different plan. But your time is always here. Jesus is gonna make a contrast now between himself and his brothers. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that it's works are evil. So you go up to the feast. I'm not going up to the feast for my time as not yet fully come. You guys can go to the feast. You guys will blend right in. You guys. Everybody. You'll be happy. Doesn't matter when you go see. No, I'm the one calling the world out. I'm the one telling the Jews that they need to repent of their sins and they need to put their faith in me. So I'm gonna go based on God's timing. You guys just do whatever you want. Even Jesus begins to kind of draw a line here between himself and his brothers. And after saying this, he remains in Galilee. The brothers would have gone down in a caravan. It would have been public. And Jesus purposely chooses to avoid the public entrance into Jerusalem because he says cryptically here, his time has not yet come.

[00:09:43] Now, I don't know if anybody else can relate to this. When you start talking to your family and the issue of Jesus comes up, there's a sense of division that takes place.

[00:09:54] It happened even Jesus own family, even his own brothers, can agree with him about who he was. Now, Matthew, thirteen fifty five quotes. That gives us a list of four brothers of Jesus, James, Joseph and Simon and Judas, who usually goes by Jude. Now, we know that James and Jude do end up eventually believing in Jesus because both of them ends up writing books in our New Testament. We looked at Jude last week and during the sermon and maybe you've read the Book of James before. But at this point here in our setting today, there's tension in the family of Jesus. And this wasn't the first time. Go back to Mark Chapter three and you'll see it was happening even earlier when Jesus was popular. We started to see that not everybody in Jesus, his own family was even in agreement about who he was. And maybe you experienced this recently. Maybe you had a family gathering around Thanksgiving time. Maybe you're looking forward to more family gatherings coming towards Christmas time and maybe when your extended family, maybe even your immediate family, when you guys all get together and you sit down and you start talk and maybe there's a lot of disagreement about Jesus. Well, yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it's somewhat encouraging to know what happened in his own family. He can relate to the tension in your family. He experienced it himself. Look at chapter three of Marc, verse 20. This is when he's very popular. Everybody was crowding around, wants to hear him teach, wants to see the miracles.

[00:11:31] So he went home, but the crowd gathered again. They won't even let him go home. They just followed him to the house. They crowded out the house so that they could not even eat. They can't even prepare a meal because there's so many people crowding into the house. And when his family heard it, they went out to seize him for they were saying he's out of his mind.

[00:11:50] Oh, here's crazy brother Jesus not even eating dinner, not even telling the people to take a break and just have something to eat. You know, you can imagine your family being concerned about your health because you're so into something. You're not even stop in to get something to eat. Well, you can see there's not a like mindedness here. He's so involved in the ministry and he's so involved teaching and doing miracles that his family, they think he's going crazy. They think he's losing it. Maybe some of your families have said this to you. When you got saved and started following Jesus, you're out of your mind. That's what Jesus his family thought. And after some time here where he's doing some interaction with the people there at the house, go down a verse 31. And his mother and his brothers, they make it their remember, they want to seize him. They're going to force feed Jesus and make him eat a meal and provide it for thousands of others. But he can't even eat it himself.

[00:12:41] What's wrong with this guy and his mother and his brothers game and standing outside, they sent to him and called him, but they can't even get into the house because there's such a crowd and a crowd was sitting around him and the word gets passed in here. And they said to him, your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you.

[00:12:59] And he answered them. Here's Jesus now getting philosophical on the family. Well, who are my mother and my brothers?

[00:13:09] And looking about it, those who sat around him, his disciples, people who were there to learn from his teaching, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers.

[00:13:18] For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother. What an amazing moment. Here comes the family of Jesus. And he uses that moment while they're outside to say, hey, you know, actually, I feel a lot closer to you guys than I do to my own family because we're on the same page.

[00:13:38] We want to do what God tells us to do. These guys, they don't get it. That's basically what he said.

[00:13:43] I don't know how you feel. I don't know how plugged in you've gotten here at our new church that God's grown up here in Huntington Beach. But I can honestly say after a little over a year of church here that I feel closer with some of the brothers in here that I've only known in the last two years of my life than I do with my own extended family.

[00:14:02] And I just recently was reminded about this during the Thanksgiving time. And you guys have Thanksgiving dinner with your family. We drove such a long way to have that one meal. I don't know if anybody else did that. I'm talking about hotels were involved in how far we went for Thanksgiving dinner.

[00:14:19] And it was a gathering of the extended family. And it was a nice dinner. And I mean, there was the turkey there. There was the the dark meat, the light meat. There was the stuffing, the mashed potatoes and making anybody hungry, talking about this. There were multiple types of cranberry sauce. I don't even know why you need one cranberry sauce to begin with, but we had different kinds of cranberry sauce. I was throwing it on everything and it was just a beautiful table arrangement. It was like the adult table. The kid table. It's family time. Let's see. And you could literally hear the clinking of the silverware on the plates as people were eating. Like you could hear someone put their glass down on the table cloth because the silence was that profound.

[00:15:08] At the family gathering that I was at. I don't know if you've experienced something like that.

[00:15:13] What are we going to talk about? We all got here.

[00:15:16] Here we are. What's the subject of conversation, eh? Will you pass me the other kind of cranberry sauce? Right. Now, see, I'm used to talking to people about Jesus. I'm the pastor here at the church. That's what I do. Most people. They refer to me as the pastor. They want to talk about Jesus when they talk to me. I like talking about Jesus. It works out pretty good.

[00:15:37] We're on the same page. Extended family.

[00:15:40] I didn't I didn't know quite how far we were all ready to go on that conversation.

[00:15:46] Felt a little interesting fact, it was both sides of my family, we got to have gatherings, we see my family, my my side, my wife's side, we love them, we love to see them. We feel an affinity towards them. But when it comes down to what are we going to talk about right now, we're all stuffing our faces with food. We don't have that much to talk about. Now, the things that really matter, not compared to the conversations I'm having with people, I'm just getting to know here at this church where it feels like we could talk for hours because we're so on the same page.

[00:16:16] In fact, I got to have lunch with a guy this week and we've gotten to know each other a little bit here at the church. But this was the first time we got to sit down one on one and we started eating and he was going hard from the beginning. He's like, let's start with an appetizer. And then we were on to lunch and then dessert that, you know, the waiter came and he's like, hey, you guys want any dessert?

[00:16:35] And usually I'm pretty tapped out by dessert time. Right. And he said, we're going all the way dessert. Right. And we talked for two hours and we could have talked honestly for two hours more. You know why? Because we had Jesus Christ in common.

[00:16:48] That's why there was limitless conversation.

[00:16:52] We're not blood. We didn't even come from the same parts of the world. But we are blood in Christ. His blood has given us life. We share that life now. And we can talk closer than I can with people from my own family that have known me all of my life.

[00:17:10] That's how it is, whether, you know, Christ or not determines your family relationships, and this is how Jesus promised it was going to be. Go to Matthew, Chapter 10. Just a few pages over to the left here. Going back into another gospel. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. Well, look what Jesus promised would happen. A new spin on peace on Earth. Linus courted that for us. Glory to God in the highest on earth, peace among men with whom he is pleased. You're probably gonna get a card or see a sign this season that says peace on Earth. And it looks all nice. Well, the peace that is praised. God is praised for their. And Luke, too, is a peace between God and man. That's the kind of peace we're talking about. That there is one now who's come from God and become a man. And he's the mediator. He's the reconciliate. Or he's gonna bring the creation back into relationship with the creator. That's the kind of peace we're talking about. Peace between us and God. But Jesus says something radically different about the peace we're gonna experience with one another. Look at Matthew ten 34. Do you not think that I have come to bring peace to the Earth? I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

[00:18:24] Now, you haven't seen that Christmas card yet, have you? You get that Peace on Earth Christmas card this year, just rip it up, throw it in the trash. That's not what Jesus said. Didn't promise peace on Earth. Where's the sword? Christmas card. Right. Because that's what we're all going to experience, perhaps with our extended families this Christmas.

[00:18:43] It's going to feel like a line has been drawn down the middle of the table. There are things that are OK to talk about and there are things that are not OK to talk about. And perhaps the most controversial of them all could be who is Jesus Christ?

[00:18:57] And Jesus, he says flat out. Here's what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna I'm gonna bring tension into families, I'm gonna divide people.

[00:19:03] I'm in a force people to pick a side on what they believe about me happened in his own family because he says verse 35 for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother and a daughter in law against her mother in law.

[00:19:17] And a person's enemies will be those of his own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Not only is there going to be tension, perhaps in your family over Jesus Christ Jesus, isn't there better be tension in your family about me because not everybody in your family better know you love me more than you love them.

[00:19:46] That's what he's demanding here. And he says in verse 38, whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds his life, you want to find your life. You want to hunker down and it be be pleasing to your extended family, to people here in this world. They're going to all be happy with you. Well, you want to find your life here, you lose it. But if you lose your life, for his sake, for Jesus sake, for my sake, he says, you will find it.

[00:20:11] He promises tension even in our immediate family, perhaps in our extended family gatherings, when there are different opinions of Jesus. There will be tension and you should be actually encouraged about that because you should be encouraged. That means you have chosen Jesus over other people. That's what he would want you to do.

[00:20:32] And in fact, when you feel uncomfortable. And what do I say? And I'm not sure how to deal with it. And you go to pray to God to ask for help, to love your family.

[00:20:41] This Christmas season, you have a high priest who can sympathize with the pain that you're going through right there because his brothers were the same way to him. Same exact way. Point number one, let's get it down like this.

[00:20:54] You need to get ready for the sword this Christmas. That's what's going to come. And this sermon took a dark turn. Let's go back to Linus, where Snoopy right now.

[00:21:06] I mean, the sort this Christmas. Yeah. We got to get honest about where we're at with our families and we got there. There's a healthy division. I guess we're saying it's a good thing when you're on the side with Jesus Christ. Even then, if that means some of your family members are on the other side, we want to we want to represent Christ even with our earthly families, even if it's painful and hard. We want to pray about a loving way to represent Jesus in the Christmas season, something he had to do even with his own brothers to go back to John Chapter seven and in that backdrop.

[00:21:44] So you got to realize what a difficult moment this is for Jesus. But trade by many in Galilee going down to Judea where they want to kill him and he can't even go with his own brothers because they don't believe in him. And so here in verse 10, this is John, chapter seven, verse 10. But after his brothers had gone up to a feast, then Jesus also went up. Now, he didn't go with them because he didn't want to go out in a way that everybody would see. He didn't want to go publicly, but in private. So he did go to the feast. But later and secretly and the Jews were looking for him at the feast. And they were saying, where is he? There's this anticipation. When's Jesus going to show up? What's he going to do this time? There was much muttering about him among the people, while some said he's a good man. Others said no, he is leading the people astray. Notice in every response, there's gonna be people for Jesus and people against Jesus. That's always the response to the to the revelation of Jesus Christ. Yet for fear of the Jews. No one was speaking openly of him. There's this hush. There's this murmur. There's this sense of what's going to happen. And about the middle of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. And this would have been common. Many rabbis would've gone into the temple and they were taught and people would come to learn from them. A crowd would have gathered around them.

[00:23:03] And Jesus all of a sudden there he is in the temple and he's teaching. And the Jews marveled, saying, how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied? Like what Rabbi taught Jesus because he's come in and he's teaching some amazing things and he is really making me think and he speaks like authority. And I'm in awe of what Jesus says. Like, where did he get this from? How did he learn this? I don't remember Rabbi So-and-so saying Jesus was one of his disciples.

[00:23:32] Where did Jesus learn? This is the idea. And here's his answer. Verse 16. So Jesus answered that my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.

[00:23:40] If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him. Who sent him. Is true, and in him there is no false, so that's Jesus referring to himself as not Moses given you the law net yet none of you keeps the law.

[00:24:06] Why do you seek to kill me?

[00:24:09] I would have been typical for rabbis to always authenticate everything they were saying by referring back to so-and-so or quoting so-and-so. And here comes Jesus. And he is not like referring to all these other guys. He's just saying it like it is. He's just speaking the truth. Like he has the authority to tell the truth. And the people are like, how did he learn all of this? And he says, well, it's from him who sent me, referring to God, the father.

[00:24:34] You won't back down on this. God's my father.

[00:24:36] And he sent me to you kind of thing, even though that's the whole controversy.

[00:24:41] And then you can see that starting in verse 19, Jesus has a rebuttal. He wants to respond to his critics. If you look at those three points there on that handout that we learned six weeks ago, I think it was when we were in John Chapter five that the three reasons people rejected Jesus and John five is they didn't have a need for him. They were fine. They they didn't understand how the rules work. They thought they could actually keep the rules of the law. And then he said he was God and that was it. They wanted to kill him. They couldn't handle it. We'll look at first thing he goes after is none of you keeps the law. None of you guys are OK. All of you guys are. He already told his brothers. Yeah. I'm the one calling him out for being evil.

[00:25:23] The phrase we like to use around here is cesspools of wickedness. Have you heard that one before? Right.

[00:25:29] Like, our heart is a sewage system that eventually comes up and out into our lives because the evil comes from within. That's what Jesus teaches about, man. You can't keep the law. He's telling these people and then he jumps right to. Why do you seek to kill me?

[00:25:44] Now, the crowd answered, you have a demon who is who is seeking to kill you because not everybody in the crowd was a part of the Jewish authority who wanted him dead. And so some are like, well, you have a demon who's seeking to kill you. We're not trying to kill you.

[00:25:57] You have a demon now telling Jesus that he has a demon is actually one of the right responses to Jesus Christ. Actually, it's clearly a wrong response, but it's actually a response that makes sense. Average person that I meet here in Huntington Beach or in the cities right around here in North Orange County, I ask them, what do they think about Jesus? Not too many people giving me a bad impression about Jesus. Now they're not ready to worship him and give their life to him and follow him. Now they've got middleground Jesus. There's one place Jesus should never be. It's in the middle. It's middle ground now. Jesus is the one with the sword. He's the one dividing everybody into either for him or against him. So when the people say you have a demon, we think you're crazy. We think you're overreaching with what you're saying here. We think you're a lunatic. Well, maybe there's a demon inside of you that actually is a response that makes sense because anybody claiming the things that Jesus claims is either lying or they're a lunatic or they're the lord of heaven and earth.

[00:26:57] Have you heard that one before? Anybody ever heard that argument by C.S. Lewis?

[00:27:00] We should all write that down if you're not familiar with that in mere Christianity. C.S. Lewis gives this argument that you have there's only three ways you can respond to Jesus and demon is is appropriate. That would be lunatic. He's crazy. How could he say these things? He's possessed. He's out of his mind. That's what his family thought about it. The other one is maybe he's lying. Maybe he knows it's not true. And he's purposefully trying to deceive everyone. Or the only other option is he is who he says he is. And he's the one way to God, the father, the way the truth and the life.

[00:27:33] Those are your options.

[00:27:35] And here's actually what one of the quotes from C.S. Lewis in that book, Mere Christianity. He says Either this man was and is the son of God or else a mad man or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool. You can spit at him and kill him as a demon. Or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. In John, Chapter seven, everybody is either for Jesus or against Jesus. So this middle ground response to Jesus doesn't make sense.

[00:28:16] You clearly don't understand what Jesus is saying if you're just okay with him in the middle.

[00:28:23] He's divisive and the crowd, they say you have a demon. At least they're getting that. What he's saying is crazy kind of stuff that he was sent by God. Yeah, somebody told me they were God. I would probably think that they were crazy.

[00:28:39] That's that's what they're thinking. But now here's Jesus response. Months. Maybe he's been waiting to say this at this exact moment.

[00:28:46] I did one work and he's referring when he says that to the miracle he did to heal the man on the Sabbath in John Chapter five. I did one work and you all marvel at it.

[00:28:58] And really what he's talking about is you are outraged that it was on the Sabbath. Moses gave you circumcision. Talking about this Old Testament sign that for the males that they were of Israel, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers, it actually goes all the way back to Abraham.

[00:29:14] And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath the man received circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken. Are you angry with me? Because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well.

[00:29:30] Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. I mean, this is a this is a hard argument for them to refute right here, because the rule was that if you were a male born in of the nation of Israel, that on the eighth day you had to be circumcised.

[00:29:51] And no matter what day the baby's son was born, eight days after that, they circumcised him, even if it was on the Sabbath day when you're not supposed to do any work, which is why they got so upset with Jesus for healing the man. And so the fact that he is now exposing, hey, you actually even do things on the Sabbath when you think it's the right thing to do and now you're going to come after me.

[00:30:15] It's an irrefutable argument that he's got them with.

[00:30:20] And then he gets down to the real heart of the issue, look at verse 24, do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment. You guys aren't looking at this the right way. Go back to verse 17. Here's a key phrase we want to zero in on. And that Jesus gives to the crowd here in John, Chapter seven at the feast of booze.

[00:30:37] If anyone's will. Is to do God's will. If your will is God's will. He will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority. Here's what Jesus is saying. You guys are judging from the outside perspective, you're not judging with right judgment. What you're doing is you're listening to what I'm saying and you're on the outside like you're above it. You're outside of it. And you get to decide if what I'm saying is something that you're going to run with or not. And maybe you'll pick some pieces that you like and maybe you'll reject others. But you sit in a place of judgment where you get to decide if I'm true or not. No. If you wanted to do God's will. If you were ready to sit under my teaching, Jesus is saying, if I had authority over you and I tell you what God says and that's what you want to do, is what God tells you to do, then you would know I'm God.

[00:31:29] So you're not doing this right?

[00:31:30] Jesus tells the crowd you were if you came here and you really wanted God's will. When I start speaking, you would recognize I'm from God and you would want to do what I'm saying. But because you are so judgmental and you're so above it. You sit on the outside and then you kind of shoot me down.

[00:31:46] I wonder how many people are doing that, maybe even here this morning.

[00:31:49] We come to church and we hear what the Bible says. We don't even think about it maybe as what the Bible says, what's that guy up there saying?

[00:31:56] And then we decide as we leave if we think that is something that we're going to get into or not. And we kind of can judge it from an outside or do we come in here and we sit under the teaching? We sit under the authority of the word of God and the power of the Holy Spirit. And when it's clear that God has said something in this book that he expects you to do your immediate responses, that's what I'm going to go to.

[00:32:21] I live to do the will of the father who sent me. This is what Jesus his mindset is. This is what is revealed in this passage. That's the kind of person he's looking for. That's the kind of person it says in a really positive way. That person will get it. They know who I am. They'll follow me. The one who is ready to do God's will.

[00:32:43] And now you can see the response here. There's more division after this statement that Jesus responds to, his critics will look at verse 25. Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, is not this the man whom they seek to kill?

[00:32:56] You can see different pockets of the crowd or having different responses. Well, wow, if they're trying to kill this guy. And here he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him. Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ? Do you see how the logics work in there? OK. So they want to kill him. But he's out here and he's teaching in the temple. And nobody's stopping him. Nobody's doing anything about it. Like, do they want to kill him because they know he's the Christ? Conspiracy theory starts running and people's heads here. They're not arresting him. So maybe it's all really true. That's a line of logic that's going. But, well, here's a counterargument. Verse 27. We know where this man comes from.

[00:33:36] We've seen Jesus. He's been around. Maybe we know his family. We know he's from Nazareth up there in Galilee. We know where this man comes from. And when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from. They're expecting maybe a more powerful entrance, some kind of military figure, some kind of leader, maybe riding on the clouds, judging the nations. They've read those parts. They're like, where's that guy? This guy is just from like Nazareth or something. Maybe, I don't know.

[00:34:02] There's debate going on and Jesus in the middle of this debate. He proclaimed he shouts out as he taught in the temple, you know me and you know where I come from. But I have not come of my own accord. You might think you know where I came from, but I didn't just show up. I'm not self announced. I'm not promoting myself. He who sent me is true. And him? You do not know. I know him talking about God, the father, for I come from him and he sent me. And then this is amazing to me in verse 30. So they were seeking to arrest him. OK, now they're on it. Go get him. And they seek to arrest him. But no one laid a hand on him. Why? Because his hour had not yet come. What an interesting phrase, and then verse 31. Yet many of the people believed in him, a lot of people now are having a positive response. They said when the Christ appears, when the messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done? I mean, could somebody really come more awesome than this guy? And debate is just taking over the streets of Jerusalem about who Jesus is. He's dividing the crowd right down the middle. People vote against him. People for him. And they want to come and arrest him. But they can't. What?

[00:35:13] Because it's not the right time. Because it's not the father's will.

[00:35:17] What we see is Jesus. He doesn't really ultimately concern himself with what the Jews are gonna do. What the crowds are going to do. What his brothers are going to do. He has one mission. What the father wants him to do. He lives with an audience of one in mind. He lives with one goal, determining whether it was a good day or not. And for Jesus, it was always a good day because he always did the will of the fun.

[00:35:40] Is that how you and I think about life and all that I'm concerned about is doing God's will, whatever it is that God tells me to do?

[00:35:49] That's I'm not concerned about how much money is in the bank. I'm not concerned about the. The smiles that I see around me. I'm not concerned about the circumstances if they're making me happy or not.

[00:35:59] Now, what I'm concerned about is whatever God has told me to do, doing that is my will is his will.

[00:36:07] That's the kind of people Jesus says are going to get who he is and they're going to follow him because that's what he was all about, Jesus was on a mission to do the father's will.

[00:36:17] Are you on that same mission? The safest place you can be in a city full of people who want to kill you is right in the middle of God's will.

[00:36:26] That's a safe place to be. A lot of people talking about how safe we are these days. What would make us more safe? Would this make us safe? Could that make us safe? Is our president making us safe? There's only one way to be safe. That's when you're right. Doing what God wants you to do. It's the only place you can any here, buddy, here can really be safe.

[00:36:45] They come to arrest you. They come to get you. But they can't get you. Why?

[00:36:49] Because it's not the time to get you yet. We've got more chapters to write before that. Say. The time has not yet come. What is the time about? It's about God's time. It's about God's will being done in the life of Jesus. That's what he cared about. No, I'm not going to go with my brothers are going to show up in the middle and then they're going to try to arrest me, but they can't. Why? Because of the timing.

[00:37:08] The timing of the Lord got a solemn Chapter 40 and we'll see a man, a human who was passionate about doing God's will, someone who had the same heart that Jesus has in our passage. He's known as a man after God's own heart, and his name is King David. And he writes this psalm here in some 40 and follow along with me here.

[00:37:34] As we begin to read it, some 40 verse one says, I waited patiently for the Lord and he inclined to me. And he heard my cry. And he drew me up from the pit of destruction. My life was falling apart. It was being destroyed. And God drew me out of that destruction. He drew me out of the miri bog of confusion and trying to figure life out. And he set my feet upon a rock, making my steps. Security established me on a solid foundation. And you put a new song in my mouth. It was a song of praise to our God. And many will see and fear and even others will put their trust in the Lord because of what he's done in my life. Blessed, happy is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud. To those who go astray after a lie. No, you have multiplied. Oh, Lord. My God, your wondrous deeds. Look at all that you've done in your thoughts toward us. None can compare with you.

[00:38:35] I will proclaim and I'm going to tell of all the things that you've done for me. Yet there are more than can be told.

[00:38:42] Now, in sacrifice and offering, you have not delighted. Okay, you weren't right with God just by go into the feast of Tabernacles and offering the required sacrifices that they did year after year after year in the season of October. That didn't make you right with God just going and doing the sacrifices.

[00:38:59] That's not what God's looking for, is people going through the motions. Now, you have given me an opening here, Burne offering.

[00:39:06] Sin offering. You have not required. That's what not what it's really all about. Then I said, behold, I have come in the scroll of the book. It is written of me. I delight to do your will. Oh my God. Your laws within my heart.

[00:39:21] Now here's how it works between me and God. I opened up the scroll. I read the book. Maybe it was in a setting like this. Or maybe it was on my own. And when I was reading the words of God, I realized they were talking about me.

[00:39:34] God was telling me what he wanted me to do.

[00:39:38] And I delighted to do it. David says. It was my joy. It was my passion.

[00:39:44] It is what made me feel like life was full, was doing what God wanted to do. His law was actually in my heart. It was my desire. So who can say that here this morning? So who's really following Jesus in that Jesus came to do one thing that was the will of the father, not his will, Jesus says, but the father's will. He came to do. Can we come here this morning sitting under the teaching of Jesus? And can we say that our will is God's will? And I delight to do whatever it is, whatever I find in this book that God tells me to do, when I can tell that he is speaking to me and commanding me through the pages of scripture. And that's going to resonate in my heart. And I'm not going to judge it. I'm not going to sit on the outside and think hashad I really do that or not. Now, when I hear what God tells me to do, I walk out of these doors and I do it.

[00:40:37] That's the kind of person the Jesus is looking for. That's the kind of person Jesus is rebuking the crowd for not being people who delight to do God's will.

[00:40:46] See, that's the heritage of the nation of Israel that they should have followed. This example from King David right here in Song 40 now whenever we read Psalms of David. It's very fascinating what happens here. And hopefully you've heard of this before. But if not, let's bring you in on this idea of the greater and the lesser, David. OK. If you've never heard that before. Let's write that down next to Psalm 40. We want to focus on the lesser and the greater David.

[00:41:14] Because what happens is when David is inspired by the spirit to write these psalms of praise, they can work on two different levels. One level we call the lesser level is that David, when he writes Psalm 40, he's talking about a legitimate personal experience that happened to him, where God drew him out of a bad place and he wanted to praise God. He wanted to tell people and he delighted because of what God had done for him. He delighted to do what God's will was.

[00:41:44] He was passionate about that.

[00:41:46] That's true. We read some 40 that's a David expressing his sincere heart's desire. But David is such a unique character in the Old Testament that God makes a covenant with him. We call it the Davidic covenant. It's in second Samuel Chapter seven, if you want to write that down. But it's a promise that the line of David's kingdom will never end, that his kingdom that God establishes.

[00:42:11] That was the man that God chose to be king, a man after his own heart. And then that kingdom was not going to end, that his son would reign forever. And we're not just talking about Solomon reigning. No, we're talking about a son who's going to have an eternal reign. That's a promise, a prophecy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

[00:42:29] The promise that David makes that Christ is going to come in your line and he is going to establish your kingdom for all of time. And so sometimes when David is describing himself, he prophetically speaks of something that's not only true for himself in a lesser sense, but it's also true about Jesus in a greater sense. So when he writes here, I delight to do your will. Oh, my God, that's a great example for us as another man. But it's also a prophecy of Jesus Christ himself who came to Earth on Christmas for one mission to do the will of the father.

[00:43:07] Thirty three years. Perfect obedience every single day, not even just the right words, but here we can clearly see in John Seven the right timing.

[00:43:19] He's ready to go through a season of lack of popularity that his brothers are making fun of him for up in Galilee to wait for the right moment when he's supposed to. So show up at that feast of booze and say exactly what God wants him to say.

[00:43:33] He's right on it.

[00:43:35] Go to Hebrews Chapter 10 and you'll see now this Davidic promise applied to Jesus personally here in Hebrews Chapter 10, same scripture. But instead of this time talking about David, this time it's applied to Jesus Christ himself. Read it with me, Hebrews, Chapter 10, page one thousand six.

[00:43:58] If you got one of our Bibles, this is Hebrews Chapter 10. Look with me at verse one.

[00:44:04] Says for since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. And that directly applies back to our setting of the feast of booze, which we if you went and read Deuteronomy 16 or numbers 28 and 29, that command how the feast of Boobs is supposed to work. Well, you got to do that every year. And really, as you go to Jerusalem and those sacrifices are offered every year. Hebrew says really they're not even doing anything.

[00:44:47] Like, we can't just kill bulls and goats and offer their blood for your sin to be forgiven, it's not going to work like that.

[00:44:54] Say it's just a symbol. It's just a sign of how you're really going to be saved. I mean, isn't anybody else here just want to thank the Lord right now that we didn't live in the time of the Old Testament? Does anybody want the same end of that? Can you imagine? We're just killing all these animals. There's blood all over the place. All right. I'd just rather praise Jesus for and once for all. That's what that's what it's saying here. Let's keep reading verse two. Otherwise, would they have not ceased to be offered otherwise? We'd still be celebrating the feast, the booze today. Get your plane ticket for Jerusalem. Here we go. Right. But no, those days are done since the worshipers, having once been cleansed once by the blood of Christ, no longer have any consciousness of scenes. But in these sacrifices, there is a reminder of sins every year. That's what was happening at something like the Feast of Tabernacles. It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. But consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said, notice if this sounds familiar from Psalm 40 sacrifices and offerings you have not desired. That's not really what it's about, but a body you have prepared for me in burn offerings, in sin offerings.

[00:46:05] You have taken no pleasure. Then I said, Behold, this is Jesus now being applied to him.

[00:46:11] I have come to do your Willow God as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. Same passage, but now you see applied with a different meaning that Jesus came to do away with all of the sacrifices and all of these offerings by once and for all, offering himself as a part of the will of God and atoning sacrifice for your sins.

[00:46:34] And then it says in verse eight, when he said above, You have neither desired nor taken pleasure and sacrifices and offerings and burn offerings and sin offerings. These are offered according to the law, including at the feast of booze. Then he added.

[00:46:46] Behold. I've come to do your will. So he does away with the first. The old covenant in order to establish the second. The New Covenant.

[00:46:54] And by that will by the will of Jesus to do the will of the father. We have been sanctified, set apart from sin through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Aymond of that. Nobody here never, ever needs to offer another sacrifice for sins because Jesus already paid it in full. He offered himself for you and he perfectly fulfilled the will of the father so he could be that spotless, blameless, 100 percent acceptable sacrifice for your son. He is he is in a sea of rejection and people coming at him. He is at a ceremony at that feast, which is a symbol of him and what he is going to do.

[00:47:51] He has one mission, whatever God says. That's what I'm here to do. A lot of these people, they don't even get what I'm doing right now. But Jesus knew they would get it later. Some of them got it later.

[00:48:03] And so his focus wasn't on how are other people going to respond to me? His focus was on what does God tell me to do? And that's what I'm gonna do. I got to please one person if I please anybody in this life. And that's my heavenly father.

[00:48:19] Point number two, we've got to get it down like this. We we need to be Jesus family. We need to be like minded with Jesus in this. We are Jesus family by doing the father's will.

[00:48:30] Let's go all the way back. Who are his mother and his brothers?

[00:48:34] Those who do the will of God? He said in Mark Chapter three that we read earlier.

[00:48:41] So we show that we're like minded with Jesus, that we're in a relationship with the Heavenly Father when our will is to do God's will and we actually lose our own will and we just get immersed in I delight to do your will, God, whatever you have told me to do. I want to do what it's in my heart. It's what I want to do.

[00:49:01] Who can say here this morning that we came in here like that? I'm here to sit under God's will. And whenever I hear from the Lord through the word. I'm going to go and do it, even if it means tension with my earthly family for the rest of my life. I'm here to be a part of the family of Jesus Christ.

[00:49:19] You know that the one who sacrificed himself for you. He's both the sacrifice and the priest who's interceding for you now. He is even pleased to be known as your brother and sister. Can you imagine that? He wants to identify with people who do the will of his father. He wants to go so far as to say they're his mother and his brothers and his sisters. He wants to be it wants you to be and his family wants you to live by the same mindset. He wants you to be saved by the same blood that he shed and the same mindset that he had to do the will of the father.

[00:49:56] So I hope you're part of the church family that God is bringing together, because I feel closer to some of the men here who I know are just about doing God's will than I do with some of the people who have the last name Blakey and they share with me.

[00:50:11] But they're live in for I can't tell exactly what the purposes. And I know people here who I know what their desire is. I know what their delight is. It's their passion. They want to do what God tells them to do when you find those people. Surround yourself with them, because that's your family right there. People who want to do the will of God. So we've got strangers who are becoming brothers and sisters right here among us. And I hope you're a part of that.

[00:50:35] And not only I do, I hope you're getting involved with the church family and we're doing the will of the Lord together as brothers and sisters in Christ. But I would even encourage you don't give up on your earthly family and maybe even bring them here so we can rub off on them a little bit.

[00:50:49] You know what I'm saying?

[00:50:51] I mean, it gets tough when you're when you're there by yourself and you're outgunned at the family gathering.

[00:50:58] Right. Bring them in here without going on with you. You know what I'm saying? We'll get you back. We'll kill them with kindness. We'll come in. We will be friendly people. We want to love your family. Don't feel like you have to evangelize your family alone. Get your family to help evangelize your family this Christmas season. Bring him in here, we'll tag team with you.

[00:51:19] Send us e-mails ahead of time so we can stock them and pray for them and say, I've been waiting to meet you. Thank you for being here. You know, one thing people are doing all the time I'm hearing about it every week is they've got family members who are watching our services live. Like all over America right now. So I just want to say hi to all the family members that are out there that somebody is going to, like, hassle you and call you after this to see if you are watching right now. We love you. You're welcome. Here. Bye bye. The Internet again, right?

[00:51:50] I say we get maybe even some people here are like, wow, this is hitting really close to home because their tension actually with some of the people I came here with this morning and it kind of feels like there's a sword between us sometimes, particularly when we talk about Bible Church, Jesus kind of things.

[00:52:05] Well, now we've revealed very clearly why that is, because probably somebody in the family's for Jesus and somebody is not.

[00:52:13] And that's what it's gonna do.

[00:52:15] But Jesus, there's the almighty God, you can do whatever he wants. He could beat down his little brothers or snarky comments. Oh yeah. You want to see what I can do? Who knows what Jesus could. I know I'm an older brother, I've had some thoughts about what to do with my younger brothers. Obviously, they weren't really sanctified. That's because I don't think that's what a Jesus did say. No, he did. He continued to love his brothers and he continued to endure through the tension with them, not ever backing down on the truth, but continuing to love them so much that his brothers became his brothers. At least two of them did, in fact, turn with me to the book of James, where in Hebrews just a book over to the right here. Turn with me to the book of James. And they got on the family page eventually. I don't know what happened to Joe Junior or Simon, but I know that James and Jude, they seem to definitely come around.

[00:53:14] And James Riley became a leader in the church in the Book of Acts right there in Jerusalem, where he once maybe perhaps was the spokesman as maybe the oldest, making fun of his brother, Jesus, about going to Jerusalem while he became a bold evangelist in the name of Jesus in the city of Jerusalem. And he wrote this. And James, chapter four, verse 13. Let's see if he got on the family page about doing the father's will more than your own will in this life. Here's James, chapter 413. Come now. You say today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town will spend a year there and trade and make a profit. Oh, you think who you can plan out your own lives. You've got your future all figured out.

[00:53:57] You do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? You are a missed. You're like somebody is breath on a cold day it appears for a little time and then vanishes.

[00:54:09] Instead you are to say the motto of our Heavenly Father.

[00:54:13] If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that as it is you post in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So here's the family rule. Whoever knows the right thing to do. God's will and fails to do it for him it is. What do we say? We live by one priority here at this church, at this family. Whatever the father tells us to do, we do it. We sit under the teaching here. We don't get to decide what pages we like and what parts we don't. If God says, if I am sitting there and I know I ought to do it based on what I have seen revealed to me in this book, then I do it.

[00:54:55] Because my will is now to do his will, because it was the will of the father that the son would come. That he would be born as a baby on Christmas and the son would perfectly fulfill the father's will. And would become a sacrifice for you, a once for all sacrifice to invite you into the family of the living God so that you could live by the priority of the father and the son to do God's will. Now, your own. Let me pray. We thank you so much for this example of Jesus Christ that we see here in John Chapter seven, that even when his own family was against him, he was true to you. Our father in heaven. And he perfectly fulfilled your will. He did all of the things that he ought to do, and he did them in the timing that you wanted him to do them. And he lived by your will. And I pray that we would be Jesus his people.

[00:55:50] I prayed that we would be his learners, his disciples, his followers here at this church, and we would be able to say that it is our will to do God's will here this morning.

[00:56:00] And then any time we gather together, whether it's on a Sunday morning like this or it's in one of our fellowship groups or even if we're by ourselves, in your word, when we open the scroll, when we cracked the book, when you tell us to do something that we would be ready to do your will right away. God. That would be the cry of our heart that we would not sit in judgment on you and your word picking which parts we want to respond to. But that we would be ready to be all in obedient followers of your will. God, please make us that way. Here at this church, please unite us together as the family, as you are Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, the perfect example who went before us that we would be brothers and sisters ready to do your will make us those people we pray in Jesus name a man.