Dennis Tuuri

# SERMON TRANSCRIPT – JOHN 7:1-13

Today’s sermon scripture is found in John chapter 7, verses 1 to 13. John 7:1-13. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

John 7: 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. 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 when he himself seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his brothers did not believe in him.

Then 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 this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.” 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.

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you for your most holy word. We thank you, Lord God, for your indwelling spirit. We thank you for the work of the Savior who came to effect our redemption. We thank you that because Jesus paid the price for our sins and put us in a position of atonement with you, making atonement for our sins, that you have given us your Holy Spirit. We pray that your spirit now would open the hearts of all here to understand your scriptures. Open our ears to hear things from your word. Open our eyes to behold wondrous things out of your law. Transform us, Lord God, by the power of your word.

We know that you have called us here today to minister this gift of knowledge to us. We pray, Father, then in accordance with your will that you would teach us your word. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

We’ve said that in the Gospel of John, we see our savior—we said this early on in the series of sermons—kind of tracking through the way a priest would go through the temple of God. And what we’ve said is that the fourth gospel is sort of the capstone of the four gospels. They’re written in succession with different perspectives. This is a heavenly perspective that we receive in John’s gospel. Water correlating to the labor in the temple, representing the labor in heaven. We see these themes of bread and wine, the showbread in the context of the holy place of the temple. We will get in the next chapter to themes of light—Jesus is the light of the world. And this correlates to the lampstand in the context of the holy place. And so we see our savior sort of tracking through the temple.

We also particularly in this middle section of John’s gospel, chapters five and following, see a tracking of time—heavenly time. You’ll remember that in John 5, remember the first four chapters, Jesus, you know, there isn’t much opposition going on. There’s a little bit of discussion at the temple early on, but, you know, things are going well. The Samaritans come to faith, and then in John 5, we see Jesus in Jerusalem and the conflict with the Jews starts to sound.

One Bible commentary says that from chapters five on, we have this ground bass of the coming death of the Savior. And I guess in classical music, a ground bass is a baseline that keeps resurfacing throughout a piece. And throughout the way John has structured this gospel, the coming death of the Savior continues to surface. And it really starts to dwell, come up, and start making its appearance known in a very dramatic way in chapter 5. And that drum beat, that ground bass, will flow through this piece of music, so to speak, until the crucifixion of the Savior is actually accomplished by the Jews who seek to kill him.

Well, so chapter 5 sort of starts a unit here. And in chapter 5, we remember that what we saw at the heart of the matter—at the description of the healing of the man who had been lame for 38 years—at the very center of that narrative was the declaration that this was the Sabbath. So we have in John 5 a feast, but the feast isn’t identified generally. The specific feast identified is the Sabbath.

In Leviticus 23, we have the seven feasts of the Old Testament articulated for us. And if you ever forget them, you just turn to Leviticus 23, you read through the text, and there are the seven feasts that comprise the calendar of the Old Testament covenantal period of the Jews. And the first of those seven feasts is one we don’t normally think of as a feast, but it is the Sabbath day itself, which was a day of holy convocation.

After John chapter 5 tells us a little bit about the Sabbath, the first of the feasts, John 6—when we saw the Savior feeding the 5,000 and causing his disciples to go across safely to the other side of the lake—that happened in the context of Passover. Remember Passover? At that time was coming. And so everything that we read in terms of the bread of life correlates to Passover.

And then this text in John chapter 7 begins a different holiday period. This is the Feast of Tabernacles. And chapters 7-9 will take place in the context of the Feast of Tabernacles. Chapter 10 will actually—what happens in chapter 10 will happen in the context of the Feast of Dedication, which is not in Leviticus 23. It was an extrabiblical feast of dedication added during the intertestamental period. But nonetheless, that feast is highlighted for us in John chapter 10.

So we’ve talked about kind of holy articles in the tabernacle or temple. And this is kind of a tracking of holy time. And God wants us to think of these things that happen in these chapters in relationship to holy time. You know, we said that what we learned in John chapter 5 was that the heart of the Sabbath is the extension of mercy and grace. The idea of a new creation—38 years of the wilderness coming into the promised land. The wilderness wanderings are a picture of the voidness of the world before the Spirit of God hovers over it at the first creation. And so the Sabbath is a day of new creation life. It’s a day of the extension of mercy and grace from God to us and calling us then to extend mercy to others. We saw all that in the Sabbath.

We also saw that the Sabbath is a time of judgment because the discourse that follows the healing of the man—the argument he gets into with the Jews. They want to put him on trial for Sabbath breaking, but, look, the witness of Moses and his own witness are against them for their unbelief of the Father’s works performed through the Son, their unbelief of what the Sabbath is all about. So the Sabbath is also declared in John 5 as a day of evaluation and testing of us, right? It’s a day of new creation. God draws near to us, but he evaluates and tries us as well, as Jesus tried the men that rejected him.

In John 5, we saw that the Passover—really the greater Passover meal—is the true manna that come down from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ. And we saw at the center of that bread of life discourse something very interesting: man’s rejection of Jesus is over the issue of his deity. “Is this not the son of Joseph?” And we said that was an ironic term because they’re saying he can’t be divine. We know his family origins. But what God wants us to read into that, I think, is to remember Joseph in Genesis—that this is indeed the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Joseph, the greater David, the greater Joseph, who has come to do what in the bread of life discourse? He has come to recreate the world. He has come to give his flesh for the life of the world.

Just as Joseph gave bread to the world at the end of Genesis and so brought everybody under subjection to a man who was in subjection to God—the picture is universal salvation affected through Joseph. So now the son of Joseph, the greater Joseph, comes, and in two halves—either half of that statement of the son of Joseph in the bread of life discourse—our Savior says that he comes to give his flesh for the life of the world. He’s bringing life to the world, not death ultimately. And so the Passover makes a distinguishing effect, right?

What was the Passover? Well, you know, God came and he passed over some people and he didn’t pass over others. He killed some and he left some living. The second feast of the seven feasts of Leviticus 23 track the seven days of creation. And the second feast is this Passover feast. And this Passover feast—second day when the firmament and the waters above and below are separated—there’s a division created. And the Passover said there are some people that are entering into new life and the new creation of the promised land and others are not. They’re dying off.

And Jesus in the bread of life discourse says there are two foods out there. And if you’re eating right, if you’re eating of me, if you’re eating in union and community with God and consecrating what you have to abiding and dwelling in Christ, you’re part of this new creation. But the old creation is being judged and discarded. So he comes to bring that.

Now we come to this Feast of Tabernacles, which is the harvest festival. It’s the last of the seven feasts in Leviticus 23. It’s the culmination feast of all those feasts. It’s the omega feast. We talked Wednesday night about wine and beer and how wine and strong drink is omega food from God. It’s not supposed to be drunk at the first part of the day. It’s at the end of the day after your work is done. You eat bread at the beginning of the day and strengthen yourself for your work. And at the end of the day, you drink wine or beer and relax in the finished production of your labors.

The way Noah brought the world to rest—his name meant rest—at the end of the flood and the construction of the ark and all that stuff, he worships God at the end and then he plants a vineyard and relaxes by drinking the omega food.

Well, Passover was the harvest of barley and wheat in the spring. And then six months later in the cycle is Tabernacles. And Tabernacles is a second harvest of barley and wheat. But added to that is the harvest of the grapes and the oil. It’s the omega harvest, the last harvest of the year. The Passover is the beginning harvest. You know, we have these elements represented before us here. The bread represents the beginning in our work. And the wine brings us to fulfillment and relaxation, the finished work of Jesus. And Tabernacles is pictured there. Passover to Tabernacles—the structure of the Old Testament holy time that God wants us to meditate on.

And what we have here is a time of harvest then in John chapter 7. And what we see is that John chapter 7 is very explicitly structured in terms of the Feast of Tabernacles. Verses 1 to 13—Feast of Tabernacles is at hand. And then in verse 14, it’s the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles, or in the context of the feast. And then the last third of chapter 7 is on the last day of the great feast. So three times here it’s coming—it’s we’re in the middle of Tabernacles, we’re at the end of Tabernacles. And that’s how John chapter 7 is structured. It’s a harvest time.

So we’re moving forward six months from where we were last week talking about Jesus at the bread of life discourse happening in the context of Passover. We’re now moving to Jesus’s last Tabernacles—Feast of Tabernacles. Six months after this, in terms of the timeline, will be another Passover season, and that’s when Jesus will die for his people, die for the sheep. So we’re in between two Passovers being described here, and I think God wants us to think of Tabernacles in terms of harvest. Therefore, I’ve entitled this sermon “A Bittersweet Harvest.”

You know, these gospels are composed in a particular way. The synoptic gospels—the three with one view—the three that are kind of like each other, Matthew, Mark, and Luke—they give us a lot of details of what happened between that next to last Passover and Jesus’s last Feast of Tabernacles. A lot of stuff goes on. John doesn’t do that. He wants us to move immediately from this bread of life discourse and Passover to jump forward six months to consider this harvest season going on.

Why? Well, we’ll talk a little bit more why in a little bit later, but, you know, I think that he wants us to think in terms of harvest. That’s what the Tabernacles was. You know, the Feast of Tabernacles was like Oktoberfest. Oktoberfest. It was the end of the year. Good time celebration. In fact, uh, one of the historians at the time said that the Jews were so wild at the Feast of Tabernacles, he compared it to one of the feasts of Bacchus. It was really a wild time.

Well, you know, we don’t want to sin, but it is supposed to be a time of joy. It’s supposed to be a harvest of joy, like Oktoberfest. Crops are gathered in, beer is ready, you rejoice in the presence of God. And so Tabernacles was like that. They dwelt in booths. Remember the provision of God in the wilderness. And then the eighth day was kind of thought of in at the time of our Savior. The eighth day was a picture of going into the promised land and the new world created on the eighth day.

For seven days they dwelt in booths. Those seven days were a reminder of God’s provision in the wilderness for them. He provided water. And we’ll talk next week or two weeks. I won’t—I’ll be in Salem next week. In two weeks we’ll talk about some of the water rituals that went on at this point in time. There were two huge candelabras that were lit during Tabernacles as a picture of God’s guidance through the wilderness period. He guided them, you know, as a pillar of fire, and they remembered all these things about the wilderness. But there was an eighth day that Leviticus 23 said you engaged in as well, and the Jews thought of that, and we should probably think of it as, you know, moving into the new creation. The purpose of the wilderness was to move them into the new world. So Tabernacles was to be a great time of rejoicing.

It was supposed to be a sweet, flowing, lovely kind of fun time when people drank strong drink and the wine was ready. Not just the bread, the out—it was the omega festival. It was like Oktoberfest. And but this Tabernacles, this Feast of Tabernacles, is not like that. This Feast of Tabernacles will prove to be a bittersweet harvest as opposed to a great rejoicing time.

Okay. So children, in your outlines: Where do we find the Old Testament feasts? If you listen to me, you’ve already heard me say Leviticus 23. Lev period. Leviticus 23. And adults, when you want to review the seven days of creation and the festival periods of the Old Testament: Leviticus 23. Remember it.

In John 5, Jesus healed a man who had been lame for 38 years. At which feast did Jesus do this? John 5 was the Sabbath, the first feast in Leviticus 23. And in John 6, Jesus fed the 5,000, brought the disciples safely through a storm at what feast is mentioned in chapter 6? Passover is the context for that.

Number four on your children’s outlines: What feast is the subject of chapter 7? Which feast is in 7? Tabernacles. Tabernacles—like a tent. A little leafy tent. What modern celebrations is this feast like? Oktoberfest. Okay. So that’s kind of a general introduction.

Let’s look now at the text itself and look first at the setting for what happens at this bittersweet harvest.

First of all, the departure of many disciples. After the Passover bread of life discourse in chapter 6, you know, that’s the immediate context. The first verse says, you know, that many people—or rather, not the first verse, but chapter 6 ended by saying that most people left Jesus. So as John structures this gospel, the last thing we remember before we read chapter 7 is that things have changed in the ministry of Jesus. He’s becoming more and more alone.

You know, it’s interesting—this text deals with isolation. The way John’s gospel reads it, you’d almost think that he had no disciples left at this point in time because as we move into the next few chapters, he never talks about his disciples. John is giving a deliberate picture here of the solitude, the aloneness of the Savior. Things are boiling down here. All the disciples leave except for the twelve. Here, even his brothers don’t believe in him. He’s isolated. You see, he deals with that. That’s the context. We want to remember that going into it.

Secondly, part of this context is the Jews are seeking to kill him. “After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee. He didn’t want to walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him.” And this is this ground bass of the impending death of the Savior.

You know, this is an interesting verse. Jesus doesn’t walk anymore where the people are trying to kill him. Is he afraid? No. I mean, we’ve seen other instances in the synoptics, and we’ll see it here. He’s going to cry out on the last great day of the Feast of Tabernacles. If he was afraid that they were going to grab him and kill him two, six months early, he wouldn’t do that. So I don’t think we see this as fear somehow. I suppose there’s part of this, but even necessarily we don’t have to see it as just waiting for the right time to go to die because he does go to the Feast of Tabernacles and he does cry out in public.

Matthew Henry made an interesting comment. In essence he said what’s happening here is that those people that reject Christ and who are viciously against him, Jesus withdraws his presence from them. It’s a judgment. And so we should be very careful. What’s our response to the word of God? If we don’t soften ourselves to the word of God, God may remove his spirit. That’s what David prayed not to happen: “Please do not remove your spirit from me.” Well, Jesus is removed from these people.

So, you know, part of what’s going on in this text is this removal of Jesus. And even as the brothers end up going to the Feast of Tabernacles, they go without the Savior. Ponder that. They go to the Feast of Tabernacles, a celebration of what Messiah will accomplish, and they go without the Messiah. You see, maybe you’re here today without Jesus, so to speak. I don’t know, but it’s possible. And God will withdraw his presence from people who operate apart from him and do not bow the knee to the revelation that God brings to them.

Gospel light, Matthew Henry said, is justly taken away from those that endeavor to extinguish it. Gospel light is justly taken away from those that endeavor to extinguish it.

Note as well here that as Matthew Henry said, “Persons of merit may have small ministries.” I mean, the Lord Jesus Christ is, you know, the second person of the Trinity. And yet, what we see here is people leaving him. Jesus’s goal was not to establish a big crowd around himself, as we’ll see as this text goes on.

So we have the Jews seeking to kill him if he goes to Judea. The last Feast of Tabernacles, as I said, this bitter harvest is also the context, and we’ve talked a little bit about that. And we’ll talk more about the Feast of Tabernacles in the next couple of sermons as we move through chapter 7.

A comment that Matthew Henry makes there is that wilderness mercy should not be forgotten. Okay? If you understand that part of Tabernacles is a reminder by God to his people of his provision of them in the wilderness. Okay? So there was wilderness mercies extended to the people of God for 38 years. Their shoes didn’t wear out, right? And he provided a dwelling place for them in their difficulty. And God takes us through difficult times. And Henry’s point was that God sets up a system that reminds us of his provision during wilderness times. His wilderness mercy should never be forgotten.

You know, people have had bad health here in the last few years. Looking at George, you know, God’s extended mercy to him in the context of a difficult health situation. Other people as well—some of you gone through other kind of wilderness difficulties in the last few years. God has shown you mercy. He has been with you through the high water or through the fire. And it’s important to remind yourselves of those things.

You know, I think as an example of that, George marked his one-year anniversary of his heart attack and brought it to mind. That’s a good thing to do—to remind ourselves of God’s mercies in the past. And that’s part of what Tabernacles is. Okay.

So in this context, we have this story of the brothers of Jesus. In verse 3, the brothers of Jesus therefore said to him, “Depart from here and go into Judea.” There are four brothers of Jesus listed in Mark 6:3. We read: “Is not the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” And they were offended at him. So we know that there are at least four brothers of Jesus. These were not part of the disciples.

This James and Jude—Judas or Jude—is not the same as the disciples of those names. These are different men because we know at this point they’re not counted as part of the disciples and they’re giving him bad advice. So these are Jesus’s physical brothers, and there are at least four listed in Mark 6:3.

These brothers bring their wisdom to bear to Jesus. My wife and I were on the way into church this morning, and she said, “You know, the ultimate problem we have is we think we’re wiser than God, or we’re going to dictate to him how things should be. We give God counsel.” Well, that’s what these guys are doing right here. They think their way is better than God’s way. They’re instructing God about what’s best for them and what’s best for his cause. And we frequently do that same thing.

So they bring advice to the Lord Jesus Christ. Their wisdom—their wisdom is first of all dangerous. Now, the way the text is structured in these first three verses tell us that verse 1: he doesn’t go to Judea because they’re trying to kill him. Verse 2: Feast of Tabernacles is at hand. Verse 3: his brothers say, “Go to Judea.” They tell him to go to the very place that verse 1 says he wasn’t going because of the efforts of the Jews to kill him.

So, first of all, their advice isn’t particularly sound because it’s dangerous. They advise him to go to Judea where, you know, people are seeking to kill him. Go there. Go where they want to kill you—is what they’re telling him. So their advice is first of all dangerous.

These four brothers of Jesus give him advice. Was it a good idea or a bad idea that they told him what he should do in terms of his visit to Jerusalem? Well, it’s a bad idea. It’s a bad idea, first of all, because it’s not in concert with what he said he was doing. Where did they want him to go? They wanted him to go to Judea, the very place where people were seeking to kill him.

And it’s interesting—they go on to say that the reason why they think he ought to go to Judea is that they say this: “that your disciples also may see the works that you are doing.” The brothers of Jesus are evidentialist apologists. Okay? There’s a group of people out there that think you just give people enough evidence, enough evidence, and the care of the problem is solved. Man’s problem is not that he’s wicked and that his intellect is twisted and he’s suppressing the truth of God in unrighteousness. Man’s problem is not enough information. And so if we need more information, your disciples, if they see you doing your works in public, that’ll provide evidence to everybody and everything will be cool if you just show your works to people.

Now, this is really somewhat ironic, isn’t it? Because just the last chapter—in the way John has structured the gospel here—Jesus did these works of feeding the 5,000 and everybody left. The works are never enough. And John will later in chapter 12 tell us this very explicitly. We read in John 12:37: “Though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him,” and why. Okay? So first of all, John 12 says that he did a ton of miracles. Their problem wasn’t seeing enough miracles. Never is. Why didn’t they believe? He tells us why they didn’t believe. “That the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, that you spake, Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe because that Isaiah said again, ‘He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart that they should not see with their eyes nor understand with their heart and be converted and I should heal them.’”

Boy, more really hard words from this gospel that’s usually taken to be such soft teaching. He says in John chapter 12: the people’s problem is not intellectual. The problem is not a brain problem. It’s a heart problem. And as a result of their heart, they’re not going to believe the words or the miracles that they see with their eyes. “You don’t believe my word, you won’t believe them,” Jesus tells us. “Miracle,” Jesus tells us. And here we’re explicitly told that God has hardened their hearts.

So the brothers are goofy, number one, because they’re sending him to go to a place that’s dangerous. And number two, they’re telling him that his whole process of getting people to believe in him should be changed to an evidence mechanism. What we could say is so the brothers try to impose upon Jesus their worldly wisdom, which is that what people need is more evidence. What people need is to see the works of Jesus.

And Jesus says in response to this, in John 12, at least we’re told that we have these hard words—hard words by our Savior. You know, it’s interesting because once more we see Jesus speaking hard words. We’ll get to that in just a minute. Jesus was not interested in getting a bunch of people around himself. He was not interested in winning some kind of popularity contest. He was not interested in people coming to him because of the great things that he did. His mission was separate from that.

The Lord Jesus Christ said repeatedly things that would run just counterintuitive to what we think should be done. And that’s what the brother’s problem was. Apart from a godly sense of understanding of what God is accomplishing, our natural thoughts seem right. What they say seems logical, but the biblical way is so frequently counterintuitive. It’s against the grain of what we normally think of.

You got people, you gave them a bunch of bread, you’re trying to explain to them you’re the true man that come down from heaven, and so they’re not quite getting it. Well, what you want to do is use different terminology, change the analogy. Well, Jesus doesn’t change the analogy. And in fact, in John 6, he made the analogy tougher on them. His flesh and to his blood—you see, not a way to win friends and influence people. Jesus wasn’t like that. That wasn’t what he was into.

So these brothers of his have it all wrong. They are giving him bad advice. Third, the brother’s advice is worldly because it seeks self-glorification. They go on to say, “No one does anything in secret, but he himself seeks to be known openly.” They sort of assume that what Jesus is all about is what they’re all about and what you and I are all about. We want to be glorified. We want people to think highly of us. We want the church filled.

You know, it’s interesting thinking about this stuff. They say that the greatest problem, one of the greatest problems of pastoral ministry is discouragement. And that’s true. But the reason for that is not because people don’t give you encouragement. It’s because you’re always thinking about yourself. God sets me, you know, up here in this pulpit every Sunday. And I don’t feel prepared to do this and I feel self-conscious. But that’s sin, you see. I’m not saying it’s always sin when pastors get discouraged, but typically it’s because they’re thinking of themselves.

We’ll get to that in this sermon, but that’s the problem with the world. We’re always thinking about ourselves. And the brothers seek to give Jesus advice: “Think about yourself. Think about your reputation. It’ll work out really well. You’ll get a lot of glory from the world if you do this.” That’s worldly wisdom.

Worldly wisdom says this is the way to get glory. Remember, Jesus has told us all along several times before now that the problem with the Jews is he says, “How can you get glory from God if you seek glory from one another? If you seek your own glory by doing things that people like or respect or whatever it is, how are you ever going to receive glory from God?” See, we all want this gift of glory. Glory. But the brothers and man in his fallen nature goes about doing it incorrectly.

They say you should seek to be known openly. Go to Jerusalem. Boy, you’ll get a lot of glory. A lot of people will see what you’re doing. You know, the church says otherwise. It’s wrong for the church to try to build a popular audience by, you know, filling the sermon with jokes or filling the worship with the people. What people want—we can take a survey, you know, of their neighborhood here. “What would you like to see in a worship service?” and we’ll give you that. But Jesus says no. He says there’s a way we’re trying to do—things in obedience with the Father’s will. Seek his gift of glory through his mechanism. The church is different than the world.

You know, some people say the church shouldn’t be run like a business. And this is probably what they’ve got in mind. Businesses are run on pragmatics—what will work to get the thing done. But is that true of all? I mean, if our vocations come out of our sense of worship with God, if business comes out of the transaction of business on the Lord’s day when he gives us these gifts for no cost, if our vocations flow out of the sense of who we are as Christians, then our businesses won’t look like that either, right?

I mean, if this is worldly wisdom for the Savior and worldly wisdom for the church—that we shouldn’t go about seeking to please everybody but rather we should seek to please God and let the chips fall where they may—isn’t that same thing true of business? Now, there’s a reflection feedback mechanism that are okay. But ultimately, it seems to me that successful businesses that are really successful in God’s eyes are those that seek to serve people, to serve God by serving the people that God has put them in the context of. It’s not a seeking of their own well-being ultimately. You know, money is a trailing indicator. You don’t do things for that reason. Money comes if you emulate the Lord Jesus Christ in serving those he has called you to serve.

Well, so these brothers have worldly wisdom. Man’s way of thinking tries to make a name for himself by showy acts, whereas Jesus is just the opposite. Jesus is service-oriented. Jesus seeks glory from the Father, not from man.

It’s interesting here because they’re saying go up to Jerusalem where the temple is and do something neat there. Marvelous there. Remember we said that kind of a theme behind all of this stuff is Satan’s temptation of our Savior. How did Satan tempt him? “We’ll make these stones into bread.” You know the ma—the multitude want Jesus to make the stones into bread for them. Make more bread. And Satan said, “I’ll make you king of all the world.” And the multitudes come in John 6 and try to take him by force, make him king. He’s been tempted to make the stones into bread. He’s been tempted to let himself become king for these people.

And now his brothers are tempting him to go to Jerusalem and do something spectacular. The same way Satan in the temptation said, “Go to Jerusalem. Go to the temple and dive off. We’ll carry you. They’ll catch you before you die. Do something showy at the temple in Jerusalem. Seek the attraction of the mobs through that mechanism.” And this is just what the brothers are telling him.

I believe the brothers—is not only dangerous and ill-founded and worldly. I believe there’s a sense in which we should see it as satanic. I mean, it emulates the satanic temptation, it seems to me, of Luke 4. More than that, it’s interesting the way this is phrased in John’s gospel. “If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” Right? What does Satan say to Jesus in Matthew 4? “If you’re the son of God, throw yourself down from the temple.” Luke 4: “He brought him to Jerusalem, put him on the pinnacle of the temple, and said to him, ‘If you are the son of God, throw yourself down from here. You’re the son of God. Do something about it.’” Satan says, and the brothers seemingly, almost mockingly, say the same thing. “Well, if you do these things—if you turn the you know they make bread and do these great miracles—go to Jerusalem and do it there. People will follow you then.”

It’s interesting too, by the way, they say go up to Jerusalem. And the term go up seems to have the implication they don’t want him back. It’s not just go up there for a season. It’s, “Why don’t you move your base of operations away from here because we don’t like it here anymore. We want you over there.” And then they’ll give a reason for it. Well, you know, it’d be better for you somehow if you moved over there.

I think the brothers here are put in a very bad light. A very bad light. And we’re told specifically in the next part of the text in verse 5, “even his brothers did not believe in him.” So, you know, I’m not putting a negative cast on this because I think that’s the way to read the text. I’m putting a negative cast because the text says these brothers are unbelieving. It’s telling us: Do you want to know what the unbelieving mind is like? Well, look at the brothers of Jesus and you’ll see what the unbelieving mind is like. It’s not overtly evil, but if you look at the kind of stuff going on that seem to emulate their father—the father of all evil people, Satan.

So the brothers are evil. It says, and notice that it says, “For even his brothers did not believe on him.” See this theme of isolation that’s going on? John 6 up to now, things are going well. Then he gives this bread of life discourse. Everybody falls away. The twelve stick around, but we don’t see him anymore. We don’t see the disciples. John wants us to think of him as alone. And here it says even his brothers did not believe him. You see the number of people that are with our Savior is going down, down.

In six months at Passover, everybody denies him. “I said in my consternation, all men are liars. All men are unfaithful.” John preached on that a couple weeks ago here. That’s what’s going on here. Every man except the Lord Jesus Christ is being demonstrated as unfaithful, including his brothers who grew up watching him for 20, 25 years—the presence of the Savior in the home, 20-25 years, and these men did not believe on him. This is a bitter harvest. This is the culmination. This is the last Tabernacles feast that he goes to. This is the great harvest festival. But it’s bitter because on his way there everybody leaves. On his way there, even his brothers are revealed as not believing in him. And in fact, they’re giving him the same temptation as Satan gave him. They’re giving him the same demonic advice—guys that are telling him to go to Judea and be killed there.

These brothers’ advice is not good. They have predecessors in the scriptures. See I said that you know we would see—when we look at these structures, we look at John 6, the bread of life discourse. What was the center? What was the heart of the matter? Jesus is the son of Joseph. What’s the great dividing point that Passover brings? What’s the dividing point between people on the right hand and people on the left? It’s whether you’re going to bow the knee to Jesus, the son of God. That’s the Passover. That’s the second day—the firmament that divides the waters. The firmament is Christ and his divinity. And it was divided in that way.

He’s the son of Joseph, the greater Joseph, though, who’s going to bring bread to the world. But just like Joseph in Genesis, our Savior is not believed in by his brothers. You see, we’ve got this center of Joseph here, allusions back to Genesis. And immediately John takes to a text where his brothers are telling him to go to some place where they want him killed or at least get away from us. We don’t like you.

He was sitting there as well. We’ll see why they don’t like him here in a minute. But the point is they have predecessors. You know, Jacob and Esau had to part ways. Cain kills Abel. Joseph has these brothers who throw him in a pit and symbolically kill him. So it’s a bitter harvest. Jesus’s brothers are just like Joseph’s brothers.

Who are we going to blame that on? By the way, parents? I don’t think so. Providence of God. So that’s what’s going on here. What Old Testament man had unbelieving brothers? Joseph. Their family was the Jews. You notice what they do then—is they’re going to go up, they’re going to go to Judea to the feast. And as I said, they go to the feast without Jesus, who’s supposed to be the center of the feast. Their family, their real family, is not Christ. They’re not really brothers of his. They end up blurring into the crowd. They’re not talked about anymore in John 7. They’re just part of the Jews. You see, their extended household really is the context of their faith or their lack of it. They go up and join the Jews, all against the Savior.

Proximity to the Lord Jesus Christ—being in the family of the Savior—does no good to these young men. You see that? Doesn’t do any good to come to this church and to be close to Jesus or be in a family where Jesus is ministered. These boys still didn’t believe in their adulthood. Proximity won’t cut it. Being part of the family won’t cut it. Ultimately, the only thing that will is belief in the Lord Jesus Christ, and these brothers didn’t have it.

Jesus makes a distinction between the family and the church in Mark 3. “Who is my true family?” He says those who believe on me. The Adamic old family is depicted here in a very poor light. Now, families are good. We love families and all that stuff, but ultimately the scriptures say that water is thicker than blood. That the covenantal bonds of people who are Christians are and should be closer than those who are covenantally linked by blood to a family and yet don’t have relationship in Christ.

You know, these are common themes—these things we’re talking about here. Problems with family members, can’t get along. Isolation we feel—these kind of things. And part of it is, you know, that Jesus wants us to understand here that really it’s the community of faith that must have precedence over the community and the relationships of blood. The Adamic family is broken down and restructured.

So how is this festival a bitter harvest? Well, Jesus was in isolation. Even his brothers didn’t believe and wanted him to go up to death. Everybody was leaving him. This is a bitter harvest.

Jesus then interacts with the brothers in terms of their advice here. He says in verse 6, so Roman numeral 3 now on the outline—we now have Jesus in the world. In the next portion of the text, there are two times described in chapter 7:6. “Then Jesus said to them, ‘My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. My time hasn’t come. Your time is always is ready.’”

He describes two different times here, right? Two senses, two different senses or appropriations of what our time is all about. He tells the brothers, “You’re ready.” See, their time was their own time. Jesus’s time was the Father’s time, right? We’ve heard that over and over in John’s gospel. We’ll continue to read it a ton. He doesn’t come to do his own will. He comes to do the Father’s will. His time is the Father’s time to glorify him. That’s what he’s looking forward to. The time when God will cause him to be publicly manifested in its fullest sense has not yet come. His Father’s time hasn’t come. But the brothers, their time is always their own time.

The unbelieving world has no other sense of time than what it decides to sovereignly impose on its actions. You see, Jesus is calling us here to re-evaluate our sense of time and our sense of priorities—to bow the knee to the Father’s timing and not to our own timing.

There are two times described for us here in this context—the Savior’s good time here and the brother’s lack of proper time. John Calvin, commenting on the verse, commented on this verse said that Jesus did not turn aside a hair’s breadth from the course of his duty. Jesus is on target like a laser beam. He doesn’t turn aside a little bit even from the course of duty that the Father has given him to run. He will die at Passover, not at Tabernacles. He will manifest himself. He will go up in the ascension at Passover, not at Tabernacles. He will show them the bitterness of their harvest festival without him. That’s what he will do here. And he doesn’t deviate a bit from his time.

Secondly, there are two moral states here that are contrasted. “My time is not yet come. Your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil.” Evil. Jesus says that there are those in the world and there are—there’s myself on the other side. There are two moral states. I am righteousness and goodness. I come to the world whether he opens his mouth or lives his life. He is a statement against the world of its evil. There are two moral states described for us here.

He calls the world evil. He doesn’t call it a little misinformed. He doesn’t say, you know, apologetics needed more information. He doesn’t say it’s a world worth saving. He says it’s a world that’s evil. Right? So Jesus again—hard sayings given to us in the context of the scriptures. In this nice gospel, we have very hard sayings from the Savior.

The world has its religions. The world has programs. The world has all these things going on. And Jesus says the world is evil. Evil. So two moral states are described for us here. The same thing is repeated later in the gospel of John. Later we read this: “This is the condemnation: that the light has come into the world and men love darkness rather than the light. Why? Because their deeds were evil. Everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light lest his deeds should be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light that his deeds may be clearly seen that they have been done in God.”

So the world has a concrete definition here of being evil from the Savior. Now, as I said earlier, sometimes this evil is soft-spoken, but sometimes the evil becomes intense. In other words, what we see in this ground bass of Jewish opposition to Jesus and then the actual crucifixion is: they start by just not liking him. Remember in John chapter 2, when he’s at the temple, well, there’s a discussion, and before that they go to John the Baptist. “What’s going on with this guy?” But it’s kind of muted.

Then in John 5, he heals a guy on the Sabbath and they want to kill him. And then here we come in John chapter 7, and now they’re plotting to kill him, so he doesn’t go to Judea. And pretty soon they’re actually going to make plots as to when they should arrest him. There’s an escalation of the hatred of the world made manifest against Jesus, this approach of the Lord Jesus Christ. But whether you know whether it’s the full-blown we’re plotting to kill Jesus here or we don’t believe Jesus on the part of the brothers or the disciples who go away—”Well, I guess we’re not going to follow that guy anymore”—it’s all evil. We tend to think of evil over here somewhere. We’re happy that President Bush has brought evil back into the public dialogue, but it’s kind of reserved for people that are full-blown in their evil actions. Well, in Jesus’s words, he’s telling the brothers, “Your time’s always ready because you’re the world and your actions are evil.”

All they’re saying is no. So whether you’re quietly saying no in your heart to Jesus and what he would have you do at a particular time or whether you’re full-blown out there conspiring to kill his people, Jesus calls it all evil. It’s all wrapped up together in one term: evil.

You know, there’s different ways to go about things. And at the time Jesus comes, you have Pharisees who are going about twisting the scriptures for their purposes, but staying conservative in terms of the Bible. Got Sadducees who are the religious liberals, and they’re kind of, you know, linked up with the Greeks quite a bit. You got the Essenes out there who are really conservative and pulled back from the culture totally and virtually no interaction with the world, and Jesus doesn’t do much with them either. And you’ve got different types. You got the zealots out there too at the time. These are the ones who are plotting to overthrow Rome, and that was their gig. Their deal on life was political. So you had pietists pulled way back. You had political activists. You had liberal and conservative religious people—the Pharisees and the Sadducees. But at the end of the day, all of them are lumped together by Jesus as evil. Evil. Okay.

So two moral states are given to us here. Jesus says that all of the actions of the unbelieving world are evil. And there are two courses of action. See, the time hasn’t come. Your time is always ready by implication because you’re part of the world. I testify against the world. They want to kill me because of it—because I testify that its deeds are evil. And then in verse 8, he says, “You go up to this feast. I’m not yet going up to this feast. My time has not yet fully come.”

So there are two different courses of action that are pictured for us here. The brothers who end up—as I’ve said a couple of times now—going to the feast without the real meaning of the feast, the Messiah himself. I mean, it’s very ironic. They go up and leave Jesus behind. You know, clearly an evidence of their unbelief. Two courses of actions.

Now, notice that in these two courses of actions—if you’re sort of looking from the outside today—you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference of the moral state necessarily by the actions, could you? I mean, some of you might have come up here today without Jesus or not seeking Jesus or just seeking a way for your flesh to rest a little easier in its rebellion against Jesus. Maybe you just come here to be a little better today, make yourself a little better person, but not really recognize the full-blown lordship of the Lord Jesus Christ over your marriage, your children, your vocation, your recreation, every penny you have, every physical possession you have, every thought you have.

Maybe you’re not here trying to acknowledge the sovereignty of Christ over every one of those things. And if you’re not, then you’re just like these brothers. You’re just like the world. You’re evil. You see, that’s what the Bible says. You can’t tell from the outside necessarily who’s evil and who’s not because the brothers go up to the feast. All the Jews go up to the feast, but the brothers are a picture of all the Jews going to the feast without the feast giver in their midst—thinking they have no need of the feastgiver to celebrate their wonderful harvest, and thus it becomes a bitter harvest.

Jesus Christ brings this. He understands two moral states, two sets of actions that occur. And Jesus, when he comes, brings division. Another theme of this gospel. Verse 9: “When he had said these things to them, he remained in Galilee. But his brothers had gone up. And they also went up to the feast not openly. When his brothers are going up, he went up 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.’”

Division. Jesus and what he has done, his revelation brings division to the people. And we’ll see this as we go through the Feast of Tabernacles discourse. We’ll see this increase. They really start fighting. Jesus comes not to bring peace, he said, but to bring a sword to separate brother and brother and sister and brother and family members and other people. Now, surely to reheal them in the context of the faith—to bring them back together—but when Jesus comes, it doesn’t mean the world is moved immediately in terms of sweetness and light. When Jesus comes, it brings division. You see?

Because those that are playing the game, it becomes more and more obvious that they’re playing the game. When Jesus comes today and tells you that he doesn’t want you thinking about yourself all the time—he doesn’t want you thinking about your time but his—he doesn’t want you plotting your actions but he wants you to submit every action to him. And when he says that apart from that, your moral state is evil, some of you are going to react to that well and some are not. Jesus brings division. To those who are sick, they get healthy. But to those who think that they’re well, they don’t get healthy. They’re not healed by the great physician. Division occurs in the context of this gospel account.

What’s the result of Jesus going to the feast? Division. But it’s not just division. It’s not just a bitter harvest. We don’t have the rest of the story given to us here. But we can, knowing what history has taught us, we know that the Epistle of James and the Epistle of Jude in all likelihood are written by these self-same brothers. That’s who they are. James in your Bible and Jude—these are written by the two brothers of the Savior. And history tells us that all four of these brothers mentioned in Mark’s gospel all come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Remember I said that they’re like Joseph’s brothers. But remember the rest of that story. They come to Joseph and they seek reconciliation, and God through a series of providences bring them to repentance for their actions, and they remain the twelve tribes of Jacob, faithful people. Remember Esau, who battled with Jacob, reconciliation with Jacob as Jacob moves back into the promised land and seemingly Esau being willing to accept blessings not on his own but through the mediation of Jacob—the same as us seeking blessings through the mediation of the greater Jacob, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus comes not to condemn the world, he says. But he comes that the world might be saved through him. You know, it’s like if this church building is an illustration of this. Jesus comes and tears it down entirely. Every brick is removed, but then he builds it back up. The only way Jesus has seen fit in his providence to erect a beautiful dwelling place for himself is to do complete demolition on the old world.

So the movement of all of this is bitter. You know what it’s like to have family troubles. You know what it’s like to have family members, you know, at odds with you. You know what it’s like to be in isolation. I think it’s important when we look at a text like this that Jesus mediates all of those things to us through his suffering for those same things. It’s bitter.

And there’s no sense in coming to the Feast of Tabernacles here recorded for us without a recognition of that bitterness. But there’s also no sense in not recognizing that it moves ahead because in six months, he heals these brothers and the sins of this wicked world and for your sins as well. You wicked people—because that’s all there is in this world: evil people. Six months later, he pays the price for all of those things. The harvest becomes bittersweet. The brothers come to salvation. Jesus affects the salvation of the world. So this is a bittersweet harvest.

Jesus’s brothers eventually become believers, as did Joseph’s brothers. The harvest is bitter, but young children, it is also sweet. It’s also sweet. Well, a wonderful story, a wonderful account, a wonderful movement.

Where are we in this picture? You know, where are we in this picture? This picture shows the brothers in the world against Jesus. So where are we? Well, we like to think of ourselves as fighting the world. We like to think of ourselves in that way. And there’s some justification for this in the text. We read in John 15 that the world hates you. “You know that it hates me before it hated you. If you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of this world, but I chose you out of this world, therefore the world hates you.”

So we can see ourselves identified with the Savior here. And that’s proper. It’s proper to understand that sometimes when we speak the truth of God’s word, the world hates us. When we bring a revelation of Jesus by word and deed to the world, it hates us. And so we can identify with that. We can identify, as I said, with his sense of isolation, with his family difficulties, all those things. We can identify with all those things. It’s proper.

But I think nearly always in a text like this, that’s not really what the text wants us to do. I think ultimately what the text wants us to do is to identify with those that are being brought to salvation. The brothers are being brought to salvation, right? We know they come to be Christians. We know this is the words of Jesus to them. We know that from now on he probably won’t go back home. But maybe these are the last words to the brothers. I don’t know. But the brothers are obviously in a position of being moved to salvation.

Does he do it in a winsome way? Does he do it by always helping them and giving them as much advice as they need or much intellectual ammunition as they need to battle back their own sense of unbelief? Does he do it, you know, the way we do it, the way the liberal church today does it? Liberal church goes out there and has no enemies in the world. Who would want to crucify the Christ of the liberal church? Nobody. Because the reason why they crucified Jesus is he testified to the world that its deeds were evil. That’s how we’re brought to salvation. When Jesus testifies to us that our deeds are evil, we’re the brothers in the text. We’re not Jesus. We’re people that are full of ourselves. We are full of our own pride, our own timing, our own actions. It’s all about us.

Even when we’re trying to be humble, so to speak, it’s about us. We start feeling sorry for ourselves or discouraged about this or that or the other thing. You know, I had a student tell me this week that, well, it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t do well. He’s not smart. God hasn’t made me smart, so I can’t excel. That’s what he’s saying. That’s what we all say to each other. It’s not my fault. I don’t have time this week to get everything done that God wanted me to get done as a pastor in this church.

See, we’re always blaming other people, making excuses for ourselves, and ultimately what we’re saying to God is that it’s his fault for not making us smart enough or strong enough or rich enough or whatever it is, smooth enough, whatever it is. He didn’t make me this way. It’s not my fault. We are full of ourselves. Self-pity is one of the worst forms of pride around because it doesn’t recognize its own pride. It continually puts itself down—self-pity—but it’s all about you when you do that.

Why do we get so annoyed with people around us and annoyed with the things that go wrong in our lives? Because we want our timing. Why? Why does it bother us that we pray for twenty years for the destruction of the abortionists and it doesn’t happen? God wants us to continue to cry out, but he says, “What’s going to happen here? Not yours. How? What will you do this week? Will you go into the week with a sense of your own? Is your own time? Is your time always ready? Is it always your time to do whatever you like?”

That’s the world’s perspective on life. If we’re united to Jesus, then we pray about timing. We pray about when’s the right time to approach something or not. We seek wisdom in his book of Proverbs and in his word as to when we should do this or when we should do that. And then we submit everything to the Savior. And we don’t get upset if his timing is different than ours.

We’re wicked people. We’re evil. That’s what Jesus called his brothers. That’s who we are in our Adamic nature. We’re full of ourselves. We’ll try to talk today and we’ll bring up things about ourselves because we have people think about us all the time. We’ll look down at people. You know, I was watching a biography last night of Malcolm X. You know, he had a horrible upbringing, and there’s no doubt, but that was somewhat related to how this man turned out.

Now, it’d be it’d be this—it’d be this prideful, blameshifting thing to blame his conditions for his own moral rejection of Jesus Christ. He would have done that whether he was rich or poor. But it is also pride to look at these situations and think, well, he should have done better. I did better. You know, I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps. No, you did not. Wealth in our families, backgrounds of our families—all these things play a huge role in how successful we are. We shouldn’t see ourselves as somehow getting all the neat stuff that have been around us. If we’re successful in life and think that somehow we did it right and the next guy didn’t do it right, that’s, you know, there’s a twist of sinful pride to that.

God says, you know, you’re like Nebuchadnezzar then. “I did all this stuff,” and you may baste over attendance at church on it and say, “Well, I acknowledge God ultimately, but you know, I really did good this week.” You know, pride.

The Bible, you know, says that often than not, the way God moves us, matures us in the Lord Jesus Christ is by causing us to come face to face with our own pride, our own selfishness—our own brother of Jesus—our time, our wisdom, our way on everything that we do. God brings us to conviction of that. He wants us to hate that kind of sin.

Now, it’s difficult for us, you know, because the way we correct our children is certainly to point them to the purity of the Lord Jesus Christ and their relative sinfulness. But Jesus also says that he has rescued us. He has made full atonement. It is a bitter thing today to consider ourselves and who we are ultimately. But it’s become sweet because at the end of that, and we submit to the Lord Jesus Christ and we recognize that he has called us all as princes and princesses, as kings and queens, to reflect a hatred of our own pride to the world in which we live, to humble ourselves to men, to situations, to circumstances, and in doing that to bring conviction to people for their own sin of impatience, self-centeredness, and ultimately evilness.

God says that we often want to think of ourselves in terms of you know, those that are being hated by the world. But all more often than not, we’re not hated by the world because we don’t engage in the hard sayings that Jesus said would make us so hated by this world.

I recognized this morning we were considering this paper by Jeff Meyers. This is an odd example, but it’s one I think that’ll kind of point out what I’m trying to say here. You know, there’s this paper by Jeff Meyers. We’ve been studying the last two Wednesday nights on beer and wine. And we have a proposal now in the Oregon legislature for Governor Kitzhaber to tax beer and wine to make up for the budget shortfall. And I’m thinking to myself, you know what this really is? Is a taxation on the symbol of completed work and joy that God wants us to embrace and to rejoice in. I don’t drink a lot of beer and wine myself, but ultimately I’m afraid to say that. We’re afraid to say it. “Oh, you know, somebody might hear that, drink too much and become a drunkard. Or, you know, another pastor might hear that and what is wrong with that church? All they want to do is drink.”

But, you know, if you go through Jeff’s paper, a clear presentation of the word of God and what it says about beer and wine—it’s an important deal. God commands us to drink wine once a week. He commands our culture to make wine and to make beer so that it can be used in the context of, or make wine at least, to be used in the context of the Lord’s supper. And he commanded strong drink and wine to be made in the Old Testament so it could be used in his festivals. And not drunkenness—it clearly indicates that’s a horrible sin. But if we’re so afraid of drunkenness that we end up not promoting the proper use of wine and not speaking that message to the culture, I think that’s evil.

We need to bring the message. The word of God comes and it always brings a negative response. Whenever Jesus speaks it, it brings hatred. It establishes new priorities. And we need to be courageous enough to speak the word of Jesus—that this world is evil as it attempts to tax one of the blessings of God. This world is evil as it seeks to make accommodation to other religions. Now, equality of justice is true, but to say that all religions are okay as long as people are good—that’s evil. It’s not something. It’s not right. We need to speak the truth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we do that, we will incur the wrath of the world. Because what we’re doing is we’re tearing down the old world of men’s ideas in Adam so that God might replace them with the salvation of the new world of the Lord Jesus Christ. We’re tearing down man’s sense of timing and actions that they might be replaced with God’s timing, God’s actions, God’s truth.

God says that’s what we’re called to do.

May he bless us as we go into this week doing that very thing.

Thank you for showing us salvation in this text. We thank you for the bitterness—bring us to conviction for our own pride, our own selfishness, our own sense of our own timing and work and actions. We thank you for the sweetness of the text—that Jesus was moving his brothers along to salvation. We thank you, Lord God, for moving us along as well. May we be proper emissaries of the Lord Jesus Christ, not shrinking back from speaking a word that will cause division and hatred, not shrinking back from proclaiming clearly that this world is evil. It needs to hear that, Lord God. All people outside of Jesus need to know that their deeds are reprehensible. Help us, Lord God, to go about doing these things. Help us to create the new world by being part of the mechanism that you use to tear down the old.

In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.