Unbelief (John 7:1–13) — A Sermon by R.C. Sproul

SPROUL: Our Scripture this morning is from the seventh  chapter of the gospel according to St. John,   reading verse one through verse thirteen. Hear  now the Word of God. “After these things Jesus   walked in Galilee, for He did not want to walk  in Judea because the Jews sought to kill Him. Now   the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand, and  His brothers therefore said to Him, ‘Depart from   here and go into Judea that your disciples also  may see the works that you are doing. For no one   does anything in secret while he himself seeks to  be known openly. And if you do these things, show   yourself to the world.’ For even His brothers did  not believe in Him. Jesus said to them, ‘My time   has not yet come, but your time is always ready.  The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because   I testify of it that its works are evil. You go up  to the Feast. I am not yet going up to the Feast,   for my time has not yet fully come.’ And when  He had said these things to them He remained in  

Galilee; but when His brothers had gone up, then  He also went up to the Feast – not openly, but,   as it were, in secret. Then the Jews sought Him  at the feast and said, ‘Where is He?’ and there   was much complaining among the people concerning  Him. Some said, ‘He is good.’ Others said, ‘No,   on the contrary. He deceives the people.’ However  no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.” He who has ears to hear the Word of  God, let them hear it. Let us pray.   Father, now condescend to our weakness by  the help of your Holy Spirit who inspired   this text in the first place – that  we may be gripped by the revelation   that is contained within it. And we ask  it in your name, amen. You may be seated.

It seems like every Saturday night I say to Vesta  that, “You might as well be prepared. I don’t have   a good sermon prepared for tomorrow morning.” She  says, “You always say that,” and I say, “I always   feel that way.” And then I said, “You know,  one of the principles I teach in the seminary   to students who are learning how to do this, I  say, “When you come to the text of Scripture,   before you decide what to preach, look for the  drama because in every passage of the Bible that   God the Holy Spirit inspires, there is drama.” And  I have to confess to you, I struggled a bit with   this text this morning, searching for the drama.  It seems almost like a travel log about where   Jesus was going to go, whether He was going to be  in Galilee, or whether He was going to go down to   Judea for the Feast, and so on. But as I thought  about this text and read about this text, I found   this to be one of the most troubling texts that  I have ever found in the New Testament because   of one small phrase that is contained with it, and  that phrase is this: It’s a parenthetical comment   added by John to the narrative in verse five,  “For even His brothers did not believe in Him.”

I want to think briefly with you about that  comment in the Word of God – that at this juncture   in the life of Jesus, in the ministry of our  Lord, it wasn’t just that many of His disciples,   as we have read in recent weeks, departed from  Him and walked with Him no more after the bread   of life discourse; but now we are told that even  His brothers, at this point, were unbelievers. Now there are those who argue, historically,  that Mary became a – was a virgin perpetually   and only had one son, Jesus, and  had no more children after Him;   but the text clearly teaches here and  elsewhere that Jesus had younger brothers,   one of the most important of which was James the  Just, who was the author of the epistle to James   in the New Testament; and in his testimony we  discover that James did not become a Christian,   a believer in His older brother, until after he  was an eyewitness of his brother’s resurrection.   But this is an amazing thing: to grow up in the  home of Jesus, and to follow His earthly ministry   up to this point, and even though it’s only the  seventh chapter of John’s gospel, we are really  

approaching the end of the life of Jesus. I  told you when we started this study of John   that two-thirds of this book is devoted to the  last week of Jesus’ life. And so Jesus is already   approaching the cross, and still members from His  own family are not believers; but when we read   the beginning of this text, it sure sounds like  they’re believers. Listen again to what it says. “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee.” He  didn’t want to walk in Judea. He knew that the   Jews in Judea, in the southern kingdom, there in  Jerusalem, were plotting to kill Him, and so He   was staying up in the north, in Galilee. But it  was time for the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles,   and that required that all Jews, from all parts  of the nation, make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem   to celebrate the Feast of the Tabernacles. So  obviously it was Jesus’ responsibility under the   law to come to Jerusalem for the Feast of the  Tabernacles. But the brothers of Jesus come to   Him and said, “Let’s leave now. Depart from here,  go to Judea, that your disciples also” – that is,   your disciples down in Judea – “may also  see these works that you are doing. For   no one does anything in secret while  he himself seeks to be known openly.”

See the brothers are the managers, the  self-appointed managers, of Jesus’ political   campaign. “You’re never going to get anywhere  up here in Galilee. If you want to be King,   if you want to be the Messiah, you’re  going to have to go down to Jerusalem   and do your stuff down there in Jerusalem  and not hide your lamp under a bushel. You   want a public ministry? You want public  acclamation? Then you can’t operate in   the obscurity of Galilee. You must needs go  to the public headquarters in Jerusalem.” Doesn’t this remind you of what happened earlier,  on the occasion of the first miracle of Jesus,   at the wedding feast of Cana, when in the  midst of the embarrassment of the host,   Jesus’ mother – His own mother – comes  to Him and said, you know, “Do something.   The steward’s embarrassed. Go do your stuff  here,” and He has to rebuke His mother. “Woman,   what are you to me? My hour has not yet come.”  And then no sooner does He rebuke her for that   but He goes and does it and performs the miracle  that saves the host from his embarrassment.

Well the same kind of thing happens  here. He tells the disciples, you know,   “I’ll determine when I come to Jerusalem. You guys  run ahead. My hour has not yet come. Your hour is   here every minute. The world doesn’t hate you;  they can’t hate you. But they hate me because I   bear witness to their evil.” So He implies He’s  not coming, but then no sooner do they leave,   that we say – we read in verse ten, “But when  the brothers had gone up then He also went up   to the Feast, but not openly, but, as it were,  in secret.” And all the buzzing takes place,   you know, where the people come around, and they  say, “Where is He? Is He hiding? Is He a good   man? Is He a devious man?” And they were afraid to  speak openly for fear they would get in trouble.

But I want us to come back to this verse –  that even though the brothers of Jesus are   imploring Him and counseling Him to go down to  Jerusalem that He might make Himself known there,   they’re not even believers. They’re doing the  same thing that the other disciples had done.   They’re doing the same thing the rest  of the multitudes had done. They’re   following Jesus for the bread that He  provides, for the hope that they have   in their hearts that He will deliver them  from the oppressive yoke of Roman bondage   because their understanding of His mission is  completely distorted. They don’t know who He is,   and the trust that they have in Jesus is a  false trust. They are not believing in Him   in a saving way because their expectations  of Jesus were not at all what He was about.

Now here’s why I say that text is trouble:  These were people that were with Jesus during   His earthly ministry, watching Him day  after day. They were His blood brothers,   and they thought they knew Him. They thought they  were on His team. They were rooting for Him to go   to Jerusalem to manifest His power, but they were  still unbelievers, outside the kingdom of God. Now when people come to me and ask urgent  questions, visceral questions about the   state of their souls, and they’ll say to  me, “RC, how can I know that I am saved?   How can I know that my faith and my profession  of faith, that they are genuine?” And I’ve   gone over this with you. I ask them three simple  questions. I’ll say to them, “Do you love Christ   perfectly?” And they always say no, because  if they did they wouldn’t sin at all. I say,   “Well, okay, then do you love Christ as much  as you ought to love Him?” Well if the answer   to the first question is no, the answer to the  second question has to also be no because we   ought to love Him perfectly. I’ll say, “Okay.”  No they’re getting nervous. And I’ll say,  

“Now here’s the third question, the most important  question: Do you love Him at all?” And usually   they will say, “Well, yes, I do. I have some  affection for Christ.” And I say, “That’s   wonderful.” I said, “But remember that in your  natural state, in your fallen human condition,   you have no capacity whatsoever in the flesh to  have affection for Jesus. If you have any real   affection in your heart for Jesus, that’s proof  positive that you are a converted person. And so   you can enjoy the assurance of your salvation,  but with one major warning. When I ask you,   “Do you love Jesus at all?” I have to add this  qualifier: “Do you love the biblical Christ?” I remember in graduate school there was a very  important theological work that was issued by a   radical, critical theologian, and it was titled,  “Jesus Means Freedom.” And what this theologian   was saying was, we can’t know anything about the  historical Jesus – He may not even have existed,   for all we know. But the word, or the name  “Jesus” has become a symbol of human liberation  

from any form of oppression. So if you believe in  liberation of people from political oppression,   then you believe in Jesus. We saw this  in the nineteenth century, where the   nineteenth century liberals transformed  Jesus into merely an ethical teacher,   and they’d say, “Do you believe in Jesus?” They’d  say, “Yes, I believe Jesus was a great moral   teacher.” With the advent of existential theology  they’d say, “Yeah, I believe in Jesus. Jesus is a   great existential example.” But the mere ethical  Jesus, the Jesus who’s the symbol of liberation,   and the Jesus who’s the existential paradigm  – none of those Jesuses is the real Jesus. If you would have asked Jesus’ brothers, “Do you  believe in your brother?” they would have said,   “Of course. We just can’t get Him to go to  Jerusalem and do His stuff like we’re trying   to get Him to do, and go public.” But the Word  of God says they were unbelievers. And so that’s   why we have to ask ourselves the question all the  time, “Is the Jesus we believe in the real Jesus?” You know how important I think doctrine  is and truth is, and the biblical ethic   and all of that – all of those things are  important; but bottom-line, dear friends,  

what Christianity is all about is Jesus. It’s  all about Jesus, and the reason why I’m standing   here this morning is Jesus. And the reason,  I trust, you’re sitting there this morning,   is that it’s about Jesus. But we have to  have in our understanding the real Jesus,   the Jesus who cloaks His glory in humiliation;  the Jesus who exchanges the glory He had in the   beginning with the Father for His humiliation,  for the disgrace of the cross; the Jesus who   is despised and rejected of men. What kind  of expectations do you come with to Jesus?

This morning He has spread His table for us, and  this I am confident of: that this morning we’re   about to meet the real Jesus, and it is the real  Jesus who promises to be really with us in the   celebration of the Lord’s Supper. So whatever  other ideas of Jesus you’ve had in the past,   if they don’t correspond to the biblical portrait  of Jesus and come to this table and meet the real   Jesus because the real Jesus will give you  real forgiveness if you come with a broken and   a contrite heart because that’s what we need. We  need the real Jesus. Anything less than the real   Jesus will leave us disappointed. I can say  this before God and before you as witnesses,   that in my whole life, Jesus has never  disappointed me. I’ve never met a human   being who hasn’t disappointed me;  but never has He disappointed me.

But we disappoint Him when we bring expectations  to Him that are not part of His agenda.   We become just like His unbelieving brothers,  who only look to Him for what we can get and   for worldly power and worldly success. I heard a  preacher the other day talking about, you know,   the prosperity gospel, the name it  and claim it, blab it and grab it,   he called it. You bring your expectation,  and like magic, Jesus gives it to you. No,   the only thing I can guarantee He’ll give you is  forgiveness and redemption and reconciliation with   the Father and eternal life. If that isn’t enough,  I can’t imagine what else you could ask for?

And so I remind you, on the night in which our  Lord was betrayed, He met with His disciples.   And the upper room had been prepared for Him,  and He took bread, and when He had blessed it,   He broke it, saying, “This is my body, broken for  you.” And after they had eaten, He took the cup,   and He said, “Now this is the cup of the new  covenant, which is shed for the remission – my   blood – the remission of your  sins. Drink ye all of it.” And in His name I invite every single person  here who is a true Christian, who has examined   themselves, who is not under the discipline  of an evangelical church, one who comes not   in pride but who comes in a spirit of humility,  to come to this table to visit Him because He’s   here. If this were a symbol only, a memorial only,  an empty and nude sign, as far as I am concerned,   it would be a Herculean waste of our time  to attend to this table. But we come here   not only to remember Him, not only to honor Him,  but we come to meet Him in His resurrected power   and glory. And so I bid you come, for He will  descend from heaven to meet you at this point.

Let us pray. Our Father and our God, we pray  that our faith may stand the trial of fire,   that our faith may indeed be a  pure trust in the real Christ,   who really has redeemed us. Prepare us now to  feast upon Him. For we ask it in His name, amen.