This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of “The Holy Spirit” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 10, 1995.

Tonight we are beginning our reading in John chapter 6, and we are starting at verse 67. Reading then into chapter 7, John 6 verse 67, give your attention to God’s word. Jesus said, therefore, to the twelve, You do not want to go away also, do you? Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? You have words of eternal life, and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God. Jesus answered them, did I myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is the devil?

Now he meant Judas, the son of Simon Ascariot, For he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him. And after these things, Jesus was walking in Galilee. For he was unwilling to walk in Judea, because the Jews were seeking to kill him. Now the feast of the Jews, the Feast of Tabernacles, was at hand. His brothers therefore said to him, Depart from here and go into Judea. that your disciples also may behold your works which you are doing.

For no one does anything in secret when he himself seeks to be known publicly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world. For not even his brothers were believing in him. Jesus therefore said to them, My time is not yet at hand, but your time is always opportune. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its deeds are evil. Go up to the feast yourselves. I do not go up to this feast because my time has not yet fully come.”

Having said these things to them, he stayed in Galilee. But when his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he himself also went up, not publicly, but as it were in secret. The Jews, therefore, were seeking him at the feast and were saying, where is he? And there was much grumbling among the multitudes concerning him. Some were saying, he is a good man. Others were saying, no, on the contrary, he leads the multitude astray. Yet no one was speaking openly of him for fear of the Jews.

And then down to verse 37, Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, If any man is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture said, from his innermost being shall flow rivers of living water. At this he spoke of the spirit whom those who believed in him were to receive. for the Spirit was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified.

Our God, you have ceased from your labors, even from the creation. Your rest is that into which you enter upon the completion of your work. Yet, Lord, the pattern that we behold there is one that is still pertinent for us. For, Lord, there is work yet that you perform. even that work for the salvation of your people. Lord, this too is complete. Even as Jesus declared from the cross, it is finished. And thus He enters into that rest which is His, over which He presides. For He, the Son of Man, is Lord of the seven.

Father, there remains for us a Sabbath keeping. Yes, Lord, there is that which marks the beginning of our weeks in testimony of the fact that redemption and the rest that is seen in it has arrived. But Father, we also know that you have given us this day as an emblem of that rest and we pray that it might be sanctified by us. In it, may we delight in you, in what you have accomplished, and help us, our Father, to keep it as is right. Lord, I bless you for this congregation and rejoice in the compliance to your will that is found here. I thank you for the Sabbath-keeping of this congregation and even of this denomination. May this not be a matter of self-righteousness or pride, but of thankfulness before you. And Lord, we pray that your grace may have its perfect work in us, even as we set ourselves to the keeping of this day. This we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Jesus’ actions at the opening of John 7 are difficult. They are deliberately difficult. The record of them here, as that record has been set down by John, in keeping with the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, The intention of them is that they are to be provocative. That is, they are meant to provoke thought, they are meant to provoke meditation, so that those who encounter this record, so that those who hear it might better understand the Savior and His message. to the end that it might be determined who truly follows Jesus.

Do you understand Jesus and His message? Are you truly His followers? If so, you must then walk through the deliberate difficulty of Jesus’ actions at the beginning of this seventh chapter. And at the end of this excursion, be determined all the more to cling to Him as God’s deliverer.

Such determination on your part, moving through this seventh chapter, such determination on your part then opens up for you the fullest satisfaction of what Jesus says later on in the chapter about the rivers of living water in connection with the Holy Spirit, verses 38 and 39. in chapter 7 introduces you to the deliberate difficulty.

We are told here that Jesus was walking in Galilee, and not in Judea, because the Jewish authorities in Judea were seeking to destroy him. However, before too far into the 7th chapter, in fact by verse 10, we find Jesus not only on his way to Judea, but as far as the narrative in John’s gospel is concerned, he will never again walk in Galilee. Now, this makes this seventh chapter in John’s gospel strategic in the overall development of the gospel.

With Jesus’ journey to the Feast of Tabernacles in the fall season prior to his death the following spring, Jesus’ ministry has reached its critical stage, the supreme importance of which is now being driven home by the apparent inconsistencies in Jesus’ behavior. You see, as soon as we are told that Jesus is unwilling to walk in Judea, we find him walking in Judea.

And if this challenges our rational perception of things, the subsequent exchange with his brothers and its aftermath will challenge us further. Jesus’ brothers want him to go to the feast. They want him to go into Judea and to Jerusalem so that his disciples in that region might observe his works.

They even provide him here with their own commentary on the situation, their own observations about the whole matter. related to his disclosure. From them comes expert advice. The counsel of men—those closest to him, seemingly, by family tie—the counsel of these who obviously know what is going on. what is taking place, what all of these matters surrounding him are all about. In fact, they presume to know what is best for Jesus and his minister. But Jesus holds them at arm’s length.

He talks about his time not being at hand as yet. about their time always being right. He tells them that it is impossible for the world to hate them, while he exposes the world with the evidence of its corruption, and thus incurs the world’s wrath. He then tells his brothers to go to the feast themselves. He will not be going, he says, because his time has not as yet been completed. But after saying that he would not go up to the feast, and after his brothers had themselves departed for the feast, He is telling them directly that he would not be going, verse 8. Lo and behold, he goes up anyway, albeit secretly, verse 10. So here you have it. Jesus, who is unwilling to walk in Judea, walks in Judea. Jesus, who states emphatically that he will not be going up to the feast, goes up to the feast.

And John, who is telling us these things, doesn’t seem to be embarrassed whatsoever by them, despite the inconsistencies, despite the ambivalence, and even what appears to be duplicity that suggests problems and flaws in the character of Jesus, John doesn’t hesitate to relate these matters to us.

Why? Why does John do this? Does he do it in order to confer on Jesus the full range of our humanity? to suggest that Jesus is so close to us that he actually shares our indecisiveness, our ambivalence, our quandary, even to the point that he does something that he most emphatically states he will not do. Not at all. John’s interest is both literary and theological. Literarily, John is at the great transition point in his gospel, and at this transition point he lays on us a genuine, a true lapel grabber. He will punctuate this transition as you move from Galilee to Judea with a huge literary exclamation point.

So monumental is it, so incongruous is it, that it compels you to take note, to wake up, to pay attention. And this is all the more important because of the danger that rises out of the conclusion of chapter six. You see, having come through chapter six, those who are reading this are liable to imagine themselves in a very safe position.

They are liable to see themselves in the company of the select disciples, in the company of Peter himself, at home blithely and serenely with Peter’s confession, and not alert to the depth of the difficulty facing them. Thus it is, John’s grand literary gambit serves his theological intention. The murmuring multitudes of the previous chapter, those that are incensed at Jesus’ words, the false disciples that we read about in that chapter, those that draw back and walk with Jesus no longer, Yes, these are all prospects as you look at the Church, but there’s an even further danger that there might be those that stand seemingly secure in their imagination, in their estimation of things, with Peter and his confession, seeing themselves then with the Twelve, their faith being genuine, and an expression of integrity. They lulled to sleep by these estimations and conclusions with regard to themselves.

But now, they are compelled in the story, as you move from the sixth chapter to the to lead the safe confines of Galilee to the environment of threat and intimidation, even of death, in Judea. And by doing so, as they move from the sixth to the seventh chapter, they are forced to go through and beyond the type of faith which Jesus’ own family members exhibit—those closest to him, his brothers. For it is in these family members that we perceive now the threat to the members of the family of God, that is, those who are members of Christ’s Church. Read the seventh chapter, then, off of the Church of Christ and its existence. In these family members, then, we have at work one vision for the Church and its Savior, while in Jesus we have another vision altogether.

Jesus’ brothers, his family members, are not denying the supernatural. They accept it. You must realize that his brothers have witnessed his miracles. They have not questioned those miracles. They have not questioned Jesus’ ability to perform them. We can say that his brothers then, after a fashion, do in fact believe.

All they seemingly are asking at this point is that Jesus give himself to a population center. He give himself to the center of activity, an urban center, if you will, so that he can be noticed. They’re sincere in their interest, they’re sincere in their ambitions for Jesus. because they perceive that he placing himself in a population center will then have the greatest impact.

What good is a religion if it doesn’t have impact? But particularly, they move beyond. just a provincial impact. You’ll notice that they speak about Jesus’ impact upon the world. What they are looking for is global impact. As they say, it is imperative that their brother Jesus, for whom they have such high hopes, show himself to the world. But there is something else here you must realize about Jesus’ brothers and their religion. Their religious expectation when it comes to Jesus are anything but ordinary. That is to say, these men are not looking on Jesus as if he were just another preacher or another religious personality. another individual who might make his appearance at Jerusalem, for they are making their statements in the hopes that he is actually the Messiah.

They are entertaining, to say the least, that possibility. Therefore, their suggestions to Jesus should be prefaced with the words, or given Peter’s confession in chapter 6, verses 68 and 69, if you are the Holy One of God, that is, God’s own Son, then go up to the feast where you belong, rally your disciples by your great messianic signs, do something public, something stupendous in Jerusalem, perform an apocalyptic sign by which the world itself will be compelled to acknowledge you. some past mere religious expectation and life to the specifics of messianic expectation and hope. But Jesus will not go up. In fact, he must not go up to the feast to satisfy such religious conviction and interest. To do so would mean for him to acquiesce to the religious and theological frame that is utterly antithetical to his true purpose.

His brother’s advice is just another form of satanic seduction, comparable to what we hear in the devil’s temptations of Christ in the wilderness. change the stones to bread, leap from the temple’s pinnacle, fall down and worship Satan, and he will give you all the kingdoms of the world.”

Jesus’ response to his brothers. In that response, we hear something of a blistering comment to Peter, offered after Peter’s confession in another context. get you behind me, Satan. You are minding the things of man, not the things of God.” But there is still one more dimension to Jesus’ brother’s doctrine.

Beyond the quest for religious impact, and in spite of the messianic sensationalism they crave, their doctrine and religious outlook, believe it or not, is thoroughly pedestrian and common. You see, they have no room, really, for the utterly unique, catastrophic intrusion of the reality of God into their world.

As Jesus tells them, your time is always opportune. In other words, your time is always the same. One thing after another. So it goes. Thus they are managed. these brothers of his, they are managed and controlled by the practical necessities and regularities and the ordinariness of common, repetitive religious systems.

Their observance of religious celebrations reinforces and confirms the constant predictability of their existence. And that’s their real religion. Even their messianic hopes are worked within the framework of this philosophy of life. Whatever upheaval the Messiah brings must be in the interests of the continuation of their world and its religious order. even the perpetuation of the Feast of Tabernacles as they are presently celebrating, or something comparable to it.

And because the world itself, even with its evil, even with its evil deeds, is never threatened by such religion It’s never threatened by such religion, because such religion is actually of the world. Then the truth follows that the world cannot hate these men. It is impossible for the world to hate them.

The world and these people, in their religious convictions and practices, believe in the spinning of the earth. That’s what they believe in. It is always the same. Nothing interrupts it. If the Messiah comes, regardless of what cataclysm he brings, it is merely in the interest of confirming the spinning of the earth. Necessity, ordinariness, that which is common, that which we know, that which we control, that which we can understand.

So John throws into the works something you can’t understand. Jesus says, I’m not going to the feast, and then he goes. All rationality, at least this kind of rationality, collapses. Utterly collapses right on the spot. You are dealing with an entirely different order. Jesus is from a different world. He will confine you. He will make shadows of your rational pretensions, and so will the Word of God.

So the fact of the matter is, it is impossible for the world to hate such religious practice and doctrine. Because all that religious practice and doctrine does is confirm what the world already believes. And in that setting, is the evil of the world in any sense challenged? No. It just keeps on spinning.

But of course you know Jesus, being from somewhere else, represents and speaks for that somewhere else. He represents something that is from another world and order of existence altogether. Something that comes stealthily, even deceiving the world and its religious system as he does. In a manner more subtle than Satan’s manner, asserting himself into the comfortable, predictable, common environment of worldly religion.

Be that religion the religion of Jesus’ closest family members, or be it the religion of very comfortable churchgoers who claim to bear his name. Jesus challenges all such religion, and in his word, here in verse 5, it is declared to be unbelief. It is declared to be unbelief. You don’t just believe a little and you’re going to get by with that. No, no, no. It is declared to be unbelief. You are not going to heaven. you are going to hell with such religion as Jesus’ brothers have.

But those who believe, as Jesus tells us on the great day of the in keeping with the testimony of Scripture. Those who believe have from their innermost being rivers of living water flowing. They themselves become in virtual spiritual paradises, and part and parcel of the other world from which Jesus has come.

Dear Lord, we would be shocked, then, appropriately, by the opening of John 7, even as it forces us to come to grips with your Son and his message. and, Lord, wrath in the interests of our being built up in a sure and certain faith that is far removed from presumption, far removed from the foolishness of worldly religion. May all of us here, Lord, realize that our Savior has come from above, and that we who belong to him are born from above, and that we, in the end, shall be brought to the place where Jesus is, that region above. This is the focus and the intention of his mission and ministry. Father, may our faith be firm in these things we do not see, even as this faith carries us past the obvious things of worldly religion. We pray it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.