Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT
## Reformation Covenant Church
## Pastor Dennis Tuuri

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John 2:23-25. John chapter 2, verses 23-25. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover during the feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself to them because he knew all men and he had no need that anyone should testify of man for he knew what was in man.

Let’s pray. Father, we do ask you, Lord God, to illuminate this text for understanding. We thank you for the Holy Spirit given to us in the basis of the Savior’s work. And we pray that spirit would minister your word to us now that we would indeed be transformed into the image of our savior. In his name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

This text is a text that has for many years now been an important text to me. One that I’ve thought about, pondered on, particularly in relationships with people—of course, what it deals with. It’s a very short passage yet it seems kind of loaded with a lot of meaning, and it’s a passage as well that is found in a context.

The context is, of course, what we’ve just discussed in John chapter 2—the cleansing of the temple—and what comes next: the story of Nicodemus, Jesus’s conversation with him. This text is a bridge, as it were, looking back to the cleansing of the temple as well as preparing us for the discussion of Jesus Christ with Nicodemus.

We have the opening verse giving this reference that it was at Passover, it was during the feast when he was in Jerusalem, pointing us back to the events that have just happened, the cleansing of the temple. And then at the end of the text, you know, that he knew what was in man. And then in verse chapter 3:1, there was a certain man named Nicodemus. So we have these links at the front and end of these three verses—they’re going back to the cleansing of the temple and forward to the text with Nicodemus. And that’s important for understanding what’s going on here.

The text itself of Nicodemus which will start next week has also correlations between it and the immediate events following it in chapter 3. The beginning of chapter 3 is the account with Nicodemus. In the last half of chapter 3, Jesus leaves knowing that the Jews are out to get him, so to speak. Then we have an encounter of Jesus’s disciples and John’s disciples, and they have a little discussion about purification and water. They’re baptizing, of course. So, purification.

And then we have an extended statement by John the Baptist of Jesus being the bridegroom. And that prepares us for the Samaritan woman at the well in chapter 4—Jacob’s well, the well of marriages. So all these texts are linked together, kind of like those little Duplo blocks or jigsaw puzzle pieces—they’re linked together. So we don’t look at these texts in isolation from each other. We see them together.

The Nicodemus account and the account between Jesus’s disciples and John’s disciples both have kind of this comment which would involve in Nicodemus’s account what we’re reading today as well as the next verse or two, and then there’s a dialogue back and forth between Nicodemus and Jesus. And then there’s exposition by Jesus. Well, the same thing with John’s disciples and Jesus’s disciples. There’s a comment leading up to what happens. There’s this discussion back and forth about baptism and purification. And then there’s an extended explanation by Jesus speaking through, as it were, John the Baptist about who Jesus is.

And so these texts are all kind of linked together. So we have here a bridge passage that’s important on its own right, on its own merits, but to understand it—and we’ll draw upon some of these connections—we have to understand these other connections as well.

First, as I said, this place, time, and mode—this idea that he is at Jerusalem, he’s at the city of God. He is there at a particular time. It’s the Passover, it says, and in a particular mode of celebration and feasting, which of course is what God’s calendar is all about: these feasting, joyous times. So that’s the place, time, and mode of this particular event. And that ties it to the cleansing of the temple.

Some commentators have speculated—and we can’t know for sure—but in terms of the image of the cleansing of the temple, some have speculated this may have occurred on the eve of Passover. Now, we’re at Jesus is there for Passover. The text has told us that. And we know that God had commanded the people that they’d go through all their houses on the eve of preparation for Passover—included going through your house and making sure that leaven wasn’t in there, taking out all the leaven.

Now, leaven isn’t necessarily sin. Leaven represents corruptability. We know that one of the offerings had leaven added to it. We’ve talked about that before. Well, Jesus here goes to his father’s house—where he and his father live—and he cleanses the leaven out of that house. And again, what he cleanses out is not wrong in and of itself—commerce—but he cleanses it out of the improper place and time that it was being conducted, particularly the place.

And so we have this link in the first portion of verse 23 back to what Jesus did in cleansing the temple. And you know, we come together in God’s city, so to speak—in the city of God—when the congregation assembles together. We go to the new Jerusalem, as it were, in Lord’s day worship, and we come together at the greater Passover, as it were, celebrating the event 2,000 years ago that Passover predicted would happen. And we come together in celebration as well.

And it would behoove us to never forget the story of the cleansing of the temple. That’s what we’re supposed to do in preparation for our Lord’s Day services. We’re supposed to cleanse out the corruptability or what sin we might find in our lives before we come to this place.

You know, we’re told in 1 Corinthians 11 in the context of the familiar passage of the need to discern properly how you’re relating to the body of Christ as you come to communion. We read that for this cause—failure of discernment—many are weak and sick among you and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, and we should not that we should not be condemned with the world.

So as we come together for Lord’s day worship services, we want to purge out improper attitudes and actions before we come here. Otherwise, this table judges us. God says, “Judge yourself first.” Well, Jesus did a judicial action when he cleansed the temple. He essentially judged and found wanting the representatives of the theocracy in the context of the worship going on at Jerusalem. And he found them wanting and he took a whip, went through them and drove them out and threw out the sacrificial animals as well out of the temple.

And this really correlates to what we said last week in terms of Romans 14, because what Jesus was saying was that his house was to be a house of prayer for all the nations. Remember, the buying and selling is going on in the context of the court of the Gentiles. And so Jesus is very upset that they are impeding the work of the temple—which was to have all the world come and worship—and the court of the Gentiles was an important part of that. They had plugged it all up with commerce.

So instead of focusing on the one-to-one commerce—the great transaction of worship where we come with no money and God gives us glory, and he gives us knowledge, and he gives us life—all of that is distracted from by engaging in ordinary commerce. The other way is supposed to happen. We’re supposed to understand that our commerce is premised upon what happens in worship.

So in Romans 14, it was the same thing. A good, strong gentile church had Jewish believers coming back. And Paul urged them that they edify, they build up each other. And you remember he said, “Not just for the sake of the weaker brother or for your sake of not being judged by God, but for the sake of the broader community that sees this going on.”

Paul had an eschatological picture, seeing in the context of the church just what Jesus saw in the context of the temple. We’re to bring people into the church because the church is to eventually fill the whole world and all the nations are to flow up to the congregations of the Lord. And it is impeding—it’s an impediment, an obstacle—to the edification of that structure of the church which is to fill all the world.

When we do not treat each other with sensitivity—when we don’t, you know, be careful not to put a stumbling block of offense, do things that would cause other people to sin against their own conscience and thus run the risk of destroying them—that’s what Paul said in Romans 14.

So you know, all of that is pictured in the cleansing of the temple and then the diversion we took—which really wasn’t a diversion—having to do with how that application of the temple works in the context of the church. We come here with prideful, sinful attitudes, better than others. We look down upon people that are weaker or deficient in their understanding or in their practice in some way. And God says, you know, what you want to do is receive into the church and into your homes and into your fellowships those who are coming along the path but are not yet at a strong position in terms of their understanding of the faith and its application.

Now, the caveat there, of course, is that Paul tells us to do that with people who are sincerely trying to please God in their actions. If we’re talking about legalists who want to impose upon us, want to spy out our liberty—as the pharisaical element did, the Judaizing element in Galatians—then the message is completely different. If we have people here like we did a year ago protesting that, you know, we drink wine in this church or whatever else it is we do that they don’t like, we are not to extend to them the sort of grace that Paul talked about in Romans 14, but rather to rebuke them. They think they’re stronger.

See, but having said that, we want to welcome into the context of the church people in the court of the Gentiles, so to speak, as they’re moving toward—as we all are moving toward in various degrees—a fullness of understanding of what’s at the core of our worship: the Savior’s word and the work of the Holy Spirit. So we want to come every Lord’s day remembering the cleansing of the temple. And this text will help us remember it, kind of as well, because now it gets kind of personal.

In this particular text, it gets personal here. This text is wedged between the cleansing of the temple and the story of Nicodemus. And we want to cleanse out the leaven from our own hearts. And this text will help us to do that, and do it every Lord’s day.

And I’ve kind of, you know, thrown in another Fourth of July analogy. It’s not obvious on your outline, but you know, we’re going to talk about the deficient faith of the dazzled, and then the untrustworthiness of the unwashed, relating it to the Nicodemus passage in terms of baptism, and then the deadness or the depravity of those as well. So you have D, U, D—which spells DUD. So this is the way to be a Christian who is a dud: to be like these people were that Jesus was dealing with.

And we want to be Christians that fly up as lights into the world—bright, sparkling, beautiful representations of the glory of Christ. And the wonderful thing is that the Savior comes to save duds like you and I and to make us glorious, shining, brilliant displays of his grace and his mercy. Okay.

So, first of all, we have in this text the deficient faith of the dazzled.

The deficient faith of the dazzled. Many believed in his name when they saw the signs which he did. And this is going to be a common element in John’s gospel. We think of belief. We think, “Wow, they believed in Jesus. They believed on his name. That sounds good to us. Once saved, always saved.” But Jesus’s response is obviously not to commend their faith, but to say it was deficient.

What they did is they saw miracles being performed. They were dazzled by the power of what Jesus accomplished. We don’t know what they were. This text doesn’t bother to tell us what he did this first Passover. And this is the only account of the first Passover in any of the Gospels. So we don’t know what sort of miracles were he did there. We know that prior to this, he had changed water into wine. That’s a pretty dazzling, powerful display of authority. But Jesus did miracles. No doubt about it.

Signs is specifically the word here, meaning things. They saw the miracles. They saw the power. They were dazzled. They liked Jesus for what he could maybe do. And they already are beginning to think, “This guy’s got power and strength, and he controls nature. Gee, we’ve got these Romans on our back. We’re the people of God. The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord—are these he’s going to free us now? And he’s going to use Jesus’s might to do it?”

Now, that’s not just speculation on my part because we read in John 6:14. Now, the context for John 6—those of you in my Bible class last year know what John 6 is, right? You young children that were in there, you high schoolers—John 6, of course, is the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. And then Jesus’s discourse about that event. So he takes a few loaves and fishes and makes them to feed a bunch of people—5,000 and more, 5,000 men, heads of households.

Well, in verse 14, we read, “Then those men when they had seen the miracles that Jesus did”—so this correlates back to our text. These people saw signs and miracles. They believed on his name. These people saw the miracles that Jesus did. They said, “This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world.” And we think, you know, that’s great. They understand it’s Messiah. But the next verse says, “When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.”

What are you doing, Jesus? You know, your popularity is on the rise. Just teach him a little bit. Now, he leaves them. See, he doesn’t care for popularity. He doesn’t care for those who have this deficient faith just because they’ve been dazzled. These men—same sort of thing as here—we have this account of seeing miracles and signs, some degree of faith, and Jesus holds himself back from these people. It is a deficient faith.

It’s a faith somewhat in what he can do—his power, his authority. Maybe they even think he’s Messiah. But remember, at this point in time, their Messiah is not the Messiah of the scriptures. Their Messiah is the Messiah who will get Rome off their backs, who will deliver them politically and physically remove their enemies and destroy their enemies. They weren’t looking for a Messiah to deal with personal sin, which is what the next chapter is all about with Nicodemus.

So they have a deficient faith. And as I said, this is not untypical in this particular gospel. Again, in John chapter 8, Jesus says to the people, he says, “When you have lifted up the son of man, you shall know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my father hath taught me, I speak these things, and he that sent me is with me. The father has not left me alone, for I do always those things that please him.”

And as he spake these words—so now not miracles, but words—many believed on him. Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, “If you continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” They, the ones that believed on him—because not of his just of his works or power, but because of his words—they answered him, saying, “We be Abraham’s seed, and were never in bondage to any man. How sayest thou, ye shall be made free?”

You see, in the Gospel of John, when it says that people believe in Jesus, it’s not the sort of belief that we normally think of. Or maybe it is—maybe it is if somebody prays the prayer and says yeah, I believe in Jesus. We get all excited. Regenerated, born again. Now, Jesus didn’t think that way. Jesus, if the faith was not such that it proclaimed him as Savior and Lord—if it wasn’t a commitment to follow him first and foremost and an understanding of their personal sin and the need for forgiveness from sin and a need to follow him in everything, if it wasn’t full commitment faith in our Savior’s eyes—it was deficient.

And I think that much of what goes on for evangelism today in the Christian community produces this deficient faith. People that don’t persevere. And somehow we think, you know, well, I don’t—we don’t get it because we only have one term, “believe,” that we apply to all of these situations.

Howard L. talked about this verse in his Sunday school class this morning. It’s amazing to me over the last couple of weeks the Sunday school class has just mirrored what the sermon is about. Today, the Sunday school class on peacemaking was getting the log out of your own eye. And he read this verse, John 12:41, verse 42, rather. Nevertheless, even of the rulers, many believed in him. But because of the Pharisees, they did not confess it, lest they should be put out of the synagogue, for they love the glory that is of men more than the glory that is of God.

You see? And we sort of think, well, maybe they’re going to get in heaven by the skin of their teeth. I think not, because in John 5:42 and following, Jesus says, “I know you that you have not the love of God in yourselves. I come in my father’s name, ye receive me not. If another shall come in his own name, him ye will receive.”

How can ye believe who receive glory one of another, and the glory that cometh from the only God, ye seek not? So Jesus says, if you’ve got people that are more concerned about glory and pleasing men, they can’t believe. They’re not believing. So again, here in John 12, we have some of the rulers who believe in Jesus, but don’t confess it openly for fear of men because they love the glory of men more than the glory of God. They’re not saved.

Now, maybe they’re on the road. I don’t know what God’s doing in their lives, but they have deficient faith. As we come together here in the Lord’s day, we should ask ourselves, what is the character of our faith? Is it just a confession—a verbal profession that we believe in him—but really we’re not going to make that profession in the context of our workplace? We’re going to pull back from talking to our neighbors about Christ or our faith? We’re going to not apply the faith in the context of what we do in our workplaces and recreations, how we treat one another, how we treat our parents, how we treat our children, how we treat our spouses?

See, Jesus says that’s deficient faith. And if you’ve got that kind of faith, you’re a dud according to our Lord Jesus Christ.

Deficient faith is pictured for us here. If someone believes in Jesus, does that mean he is saved? Well, maybe yes, maybe no. On your children’s outlines, maybe yes, maybe no. It’s interesting that there’s a word play here. It says that many believed on him. Many trusted him. But he didn’t trust himself to them. It uses the same Greek word for what follows here. Many trusted him. He didn’t trust them. And this trust—when it says that many believed or trusted in him, it’s the tense that is a point action of the past. Okay? And when Jesus doesn’t trust himself to them, that’s a continuing action going on and on.

So it seems like in the Greek the change of tense points out to us that this belief—ah, they see something he does—oh, they believe. Yeah, he’s got a lot of strength. Apart maybe he’s the Messiah. I believe in that guy. He can help us out here. Point action. But it doesn’t continue on.

In John chapter 20, we’re told that the gospel was written that you might believe—point action in the past, same tense—and that believing presently you might have eternal life in his name. So there’s this need to have a belief that’s not just some action in the past that you did, not just some partial faith, but rather a faith that is full and committed to the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So the seed parable in Matthew chapter 4 tells us the same thing. How many kinds of soil? Well, there’s four kinds of soil. And only one of those soil is good—good fruit, really regenerated and born again. Rocky soil is like these people. They see something neat. They’re dazzled. Faith grows up, goes away right away. Never really had saving faith. It is a deficient faith.

Now, those that have this deficient faith are untrustworthy. They are untrustworthy. So we’re talking now about the untrustworthiness of the unwashed.

And you want to know, well, what is that unwashed thing, Dennis? Well, I’ve taken some pains here to show the literary connections both back to the cleansing of the temple, but also forward to Nicodemus. And when we get to the Nicodemus story, I’ve taken some pains to show how there’s connections between it and what happens in the discussion with John the Baptist.

If you look at your Bibles, look at chapter 2, verse 23 where we’re reading, and then you’ll notice that as we said, what happens here is that in the context of the feast many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did. Now turn to the end of chapter 3. Now chapter 3 contains both Nicodemus and then the discussion between the disciples of Jesus and John. The end of chapter 3 is verse 36. “He that believeth on the son hath everlasting life and he that believeth not the son shall not see life but the wrath of God abideth on him.”

Now here it’s using the term in an ongoing sense. So there’s a true belief, not a deficient belief. So it seems that this entire section is sort of bracketed again. People believe—have a deficient faith. They then hear what Jesus’s response is to them. Then he takes one of those very men. He didn’t entrust himself. He knew it was in all men. He takes a man. Then a man comes to him, Nicodemus, and he explains to him the essence of belief. And then after that, his disciples talk. And at the end of that conversation, there’s this statement about the need to believe in Christ.

So it’s bracketed—this whole section—with a deficient faith or a deficient belief and then a sufficient faith or a sufficient belief at the end of this section. And then we go to a totally new venue in Samaria and with the woman from Samaria.

So this is a section—this section is about true faith versus deficient faith. And this section moves on to talk about Nicodemus, and Jesus says you must be born of water and the spirit. And then right after this, the disciples have a discussion about water. They’re baptizing, and they have a discussion about purification and cleansing. The point of all that is that I think that the image being set up for us here is a sacramental one.

The image being set up is that those who submit to the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ—which is water and spirit—those are the ones who are pictured as regenerated by God sovereignly from his grace alone and those who have become into the kingdom of God. So it’s the unwashed—symbolically, liturgically, if you want to look at it that way—it’s these people that are not born of the water and the spirit. The baptism of John for repentance, the baptism of our Savior in the spirit, and now coalescing in these two disciples and the disciples’ conversation—the whole thing is about water here and the whole thing is relating this entrance into the kingdom with the baptism.

Now we’ll have more about that next week about the relationship of baptism and regeneration. But the implications here, I think, are fairly obvious that this whole section deals with this. That’s why I call them the unwashed. You know, some churches, the baptismal font is at the door of the church because the picture is—that’s how you enter. That’s how what you need to be regenerated, which baptism pictures for us. And in order to see the kingdom of God, this is what Jesus tells Nicodemus.

So this is these people that are untrustworthy. I’m referring to them as the unwashed, bringing in this larger context. Remember, this entire section of John that we’re dealing with here is one of purification, waters from above coming down. We’ll talk about that again in a couple of minutes.

One other connection, by the way, just so you don’t think I’m really mistaken here: John chapter 3, verse 2, look at verse two about Jesus and Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. Verse two: “The same came to Jesus by night.” Now it’s interesting. I’ll talk more about this next week, but Nicodemus is mentioned three times in this gospel and every time the reference is that he comes by night. We’ll talk about that next week, but I think in general we’ve got a movement from night to dark to light, a movement from old creation to new creation, a movement from blindness to seeing. You’re going to see the kingdom of God by being born of water and the spirit.

But on any event, Jesus is approached by Nicodemus at night and he says unto him—Nicodemus does—”Rabbi, we know thou art a teacher come from God. He has this faith, you see, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest except God be with him.” He has this faith that we’ve just read about in verse 23, based upon the miracles that Jesus does. Jesus answered, we say, “Well, absolutely right. I am him and it’s great. Become my disciple.”

Jesus answers and said unto him, “Verily, verily I say unto you, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” So Jesus says that, you know, he’s going to take one of these people with this deficient faith and he’s going to show us in the Nicodemus account what it means to come to full faith. And that’ll run right into the story of the disciple as well.

There is being demonstrated in this text a necessity for submission to baptism as sinners needing regeneration if they would attain the kingdom. Okay? So these people who are untrustworthy are the unwashed. They haven’t submitted to the baptism of that indicates their own sinfulness.

Now these people can’t be trusted—plain and simple. And in fact the scriptures warn us again and again and again—not just not to trust those people, but not to really put full trust in anybody. And let’s look at a few of these texts.

First in Matthew 10, I’ll just read this. Jesus is talking to his disciples. He said, “I sent you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be therefore wise as serpents, harmless as doves. Beware of men, for they will deliver you up to the councils, and in their synagogues you will be scourged.” He gives him a general warning about beware of men.

Well, this is reiterated in the Psalter. Turn to Psalm 146:3. Familiar passage, I’m sure. “Do not put your trust in princes, nor in a son of man, in whom there is no help. His spirit departs, his heart returns to his earth, and that very day his plans perish. Happy is he who has the God of Jacob for his help whose hope is in the Lord of his God.” So we’re not to place trust in princes or in any man because in him there is no help.

Psalm 62, turn there, verse 5. “Psalm 62, verses 5-9. My soul waits silently for God alone. For my expectation is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation. He is my defense. I shall not be moved. In God is my salvation and my glory. The rock of my strength. My refuge is in God. Trust in him at all times, you people. Pour out your heart before him. God is a refuge for us. Surely men of low degree are a vapor and men of high degree are a lie. If they’re weighed on the scales, they’re altogether lighter than vapor.”

Low degree, high degree—makes no difference. Don’t trust men. Trust and look expectantly to God for your deliverance.

Psalm 118, I’ll just read this, verses 8 and 9. “It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in man. It is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes”—men of low degree, men of high degree. Trust in the Lord. Put no confidence in princes.

Isaiah, chapter 2, verse 22. “Sever yourselves from a man whose breath is in his nostrils. For of what account is he?” What good is man in terms of being a source of strength and trustworthiness to us?

Turn to Jeremiah 17, verses 5-10. This is probably the most cited scripture in commentaries on this passage specifically because of verse 10. The Lord searches the heart. So this is very germane to our text. Jesus knows the heart of these men. But I’m going to read it in context. Jeremiah 17, beginning at verse 5.

“Thus says the Lord, cursed is the man who trusts in man and makes flesh his strength, whose heart departs from the Lord. For he shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when good comes, but shall inhabit the parched places in the wilderness, a salt land which is not inhabited. Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope is in the Lord. He shall be like a tree planted by the waters, which spreads out its roots by the river, will not fear when heat comes, but its leaf will be green and will not be anxious in the year of drought, nor will see from yielding fruit.” Psalm 1, right?

So the contrast here is: cursed is the man that trusts in man for his help. Blessed is the man that trusts in God for his help. And then why? “Verse 9, the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Well, who can know it? Verse 10: I the Lord search the heart. I test the mind even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.”

So man is completely unworthy of our trust when in relationship to our trust in God. And then finally—a couple more verses, one more set of verses in Psalm 116, verses 10-12, and other text that many of you know is near and dear to my heart. “I believed, therefore I spoke, I am greatly afflicted. I said in my haste, all men are liars. What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?”

What’s going on in Psalm 116 is the guy’s in trouble, deep trouble. And this word for means consternation or affliction—a better translation of it. “I said in my affliction all men are liars.”

Now some commentators will tell you that he’s speaking poorly here. No, he’s not speaking poorly. This is the Christian’s confession of faith, that man is unable to deliver us. “All men including you are liars.” Now the word “liar” really means unsteady—no source of strength or help in times of difficulty. You see, no source of strength or help. “All men are unreliable in terms of being able to deliver us. Ultimately, only God can do that.”

The confession of faith is: “You know, I am, I believed, therefore I spoke. I believed in God and his belief in God is tied to an affirmation that all men are unsteady, unable to deliver us in the context of trouble.” And as a result of that confession, this is where the Psalm 16 moves—now it’s the pivot point—is this declaration of the unsteadiness of all men. And then he moves: “What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits toward me?”

When we trust men, our troubles deepen and deepen, and then God finally strips us away from that, and then we turn to him, and that’s when we begin to turn—now I’m talking about here our lives. I’m talking about what are you going to do this week? Are you going to place your trust in your spouse to do what’s right? In your children to do what’s right? Children in their parents, me as your pastor, deacons, the elders, the congregation?

See, if our ultimate trust for doing anything in life is one another, we are doomed. We’re not really—if that’s our affirmation, then we haven’t learned the lesson of Psalm 116. If God is just some sort of thing tacked on to our basic trust in man, we’re not Christians at all.

To be a Christian is to say, “I don’t trust anybody for my help. Ultimately, I’m going to rely solely upon God to deliver me. I’m not going to rely upon myself.” This is the toughest one for us. The one we want to trust most of all is ourselves—and our justice, our judgments, and our estimations. God says, “Give it up.”

God says, “Trust ultimately in me.” Now this is kind of like that word “believe,” right? I’m using it in the ultimate sense here. And I don’t mean to say that, you know, I don’t want you to not trust me. We should be men and—again from Howard’s class this morning—men of our word, right? Our word should be our bond. But in this culture, men’s words mean less and less.

And even in the Christian church, we say things off the top of our heads. We make commitments that are shallow. We never really mean to follow through on them. God wants us, however, to be men who are trustworthy. This is a picture of fallen man. So I’m using the sense of the term here to trust in its ultimate events, but I do think it has great application to how we go about seeing our lives as either great frustrations or lives of rest and repose in Christ.

You can tell this week, you know, if you’re filled with anxiety or anger or you’re getting mad at people ’cause they let you down—and this and that—and you’re getting upset about it and you’re sinning. See, in a sense, you made those other people your source of salvation or well-being. Give it up. Now God wants us to encourage and exhort each other to trustworthiness. Oh, absolutely—let your yes be yes and your no be no. But ultimately, and we should be, you know, properly encouraging and admonishing people and rebuking people that don’t keep their word.

But if we sin because of that, then it seems like it’s showing us that our trust and faith is not really in God but it’s in the men that are surrounding us—men and women, our spouses, our children, our parents, our friends, our church, our co-laborers at work. You see, if we sin, it’s showing us that we’re a dud.

If we sin when people let us down by unlawful or unrighteous anger, because duds are untrustworthy and duds rely on other people for their well-being—these duds were trying to grab Jesus and have him do what they wanted them to do. And they are utterly untrustworthy. And if our word means nothing to one another, if we walk away from this sermon today and make shallow commitments or commitments we don’t follow through on, then we’re a dud. The fuse is lit. No explosion from the M80.

You see, God wants the fuse to be lit in you to go off like a rocket—as lights in the world. And the way you fail to do that is by having a deficient faith that doesn’t trust and commit yourself to Christ totally, and by failing to be trustworthy in your basic nature as you make comments one to the other and as you make assurances.

Why didn’t Jesus put his trust in the men in this text? Because he knew them. He knew they were untrustworthy. Should we trust men? Well, yes, in some sense of the term, but certainly not in the ultimate sense of the word. We must rely upon God.

Okay. So we show here, we see here the untrustworthiness of the unwashed.

See, with the washed people—that are new creation in Christ—you’ve moved away from untrustworthiness. You’ve moved away from a deficient faith. You see, and hopefully third, you move away from this. The depravity of the dead is talked about here as well.

Some trusted in his name when they saw the things he did. Jesus didn’t trust himself to them because he knew all men. See, they’re not trustworthy. He knows him. And he had no need that anyone should testify of man. See, they see the signs testifying of Christ—or a Messiah they want. He has no need for any of that. He doesn’t need a testimony from me about who you are, you about who I am. He knows us. He knows what is in man, what is in every man.

This knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ of the depravity of the dead, as I’ve called it here, you know, I don’t think we need to get into a big discussion over whether this is referring to his knowledge as God. The children’s outlines, there’s a big word that means God is omniscient—omniscience. And it’s, you know, it’s really easy. Omni, you’ve gone to the OMNIMAX theater, some of you—O-M-N-I—all is what it means. Omni. And then science. And we know what science is. Science is knowledge: S-C-I-E-N-C-E. Omniscience—big word.

And I don’t really—it’s, I mean, it’s good because it certainly asserts biblical truth that God knows all things. But you know, it’s funny what we do because the scriptures say—well, God knows the hearts of men or God knows the past or God knows this, God knows these specific things. And usually God’s omniscience is talking about God’s knowledge of our hearts.

And see, we get away from that because we make up this attribute of God called omniscience. And now he’s sort of just like a big computer that has all data that’s possible in the whole created order. But God’s knowledge of man—God’s omniscience in the Bible—is very personal. You see, it’s this sort of omniscience here. Jesus knows what’s in your heart. He knows you.

And whether this is a—I don’t think really. The idea here is—so much that I think my sense of the flow of the text here is that Jesus has what one commentator called an inspired intuition of who people are. In other words, we’re talking here about Jesus in his humanity. And in his humanity, he has an ability to size up people. We’ve seen that, haven’t we? Nathaniel, a man in whom is no guile. He sizes him up. Peter, he sizes him up and calls him a rock.

See, we don’t have to take Jesus knowledge and just put it outside of his incarnation. In his incarnation as perfect man, man has tremendous capabilities of insight and discernment. I’ve got this book that talks about, you know, idiot savants or different people who know different things. History is just dotted with these incredible people that could do incredible things, but only that thing and nothing else because their mind was not wired correctly.

And we know that we use very little of the brain. Scientists tell us, you know, I’m sure that as the millennia roll on, man’s capabilities and his abilities of discernment will seem to be much greater than what we see it as today. Well, Jesus is perfect man. He knows human character. He knows it first because he was Creator and he knows the fall. But he knows it too because of his observations of what goes on in the context of the world round about him.

Proverbs 21:2 says, and I’m going to quote here from Calvin’s translation of it, “God weighs in his balance the hearts of men while they flatter themselves in their ways.” You know, Calvin said, “Hypocrisy is one of the worst of sins because it’s so prevalent in the human condition. Scarcely any man doesn’t like himself primarily. Men flatter themselves about their ways, but God searches, God weighs in the balance the hearts of men.”

The Lord Jesus Christ has this knowledge of who we are. 1 Chronicles 28: David told Solomon, “Woman, my son, know thou the God of thy father. Serve him with a perfect heart, with a willing mind. For Jehovah searches all hearts, and understands all the imaginations of the thoughts.”

1st Samuel 16: “Jehovah sees not as a man sees. Men look at the outward appearance. Jehovah looks on the heart.” The Lord…