Embracing Genuine Belief: Surrender and Transformation

Good morning, how are we doing?

Yeah, he's ready for some pulled pork. My wife is always like, "Thank you, Becca." I'm like, "I am alright." My wife said we gotta do something besides pulled pork once, but it's so good, you know? It's just so tasty and delicious.

Anyways, my name is Ernie Benoit, I'm the pastor here. Welcome to Mercy Hill Church, we're excited to have you here this morning. I just got back from a vacation camping for six days and five nights in two locations in Michigan. Gotta say, Michigan's a little overrated, that's just my opinion. I'm sorry, I like Ohio better, I'm just telling you right now.

I was there, the only thing that was really cool actually was it was also humiliating for me. We went and saw Bear Dunes. Ever seen Bear Dunes? There's these dunes that are like 450 feet. My son, who's 10, was like, "Let's go down to the bottom where the water is." And I did it. Well, I did it actually. I went three-fourths of the way down, he went all the way and then beat me up as he laughed at me.

But you know what? I went the furthest down and the furthest up and the fastest time with all the adults of the Benoit family. That's because Laura had to stay upstairs with the girls. So that's for you guys. Going, "Wait a minute, what's the catch? There's no way that Ernie was doing that."

Anyways, we've been in the Book of John if you've been with us. And if you remember the first week, we looked at the Book of John. We actually looked at a verse in chapter 20. It's an odd way to start a book study, to look at chapter 20, verse 31 and say, "Hey, it's the first verse we're going to read." You would imagine reading the first chapter, verse one as the first one.

But the reason why we read that one, I want us to look at it again, is that it tells us the purpose of this book. And it's going to have a lot to do with the purpose of our text this morning in John 20:31. John tells us why he wrote this book. He says, "But these are written so you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name."

Okay, and what we're going to go through this morning in John chapter 7, as we've just read, is the nature of genuine belief. See, in this passage, we're going to see a display of what genuine true belief looks like in the person of Jesus. And then we're going to see the mirror image of what disbelief looks like in the people that are listening to him and actually wanting to kill him.

And my hope is that this morning, as we look at this word, we would have a clearer view about genuine true belief that we're meant to have in Christ, and that we would understand it in a deeper, more relevant way. And those that are in Christ would grow in maturity of their faith, and those who are not in Christ yet would come to a deciding moment and go, "Okay, this is what Christianity is all about. This is what it means to believe."

And so what I want us to see, we're going to see three main things this morning. One is that true belief trusts in something. Two, that true belief desires to do something. And three, that true belief pursues something. Okay, those are going to be the three things. I'm going to tell you what those somethings are as we go through the passage.

But before we begin talking through the Word of God, I'd like us to pray again and I want us to pray to prepare our hearts to receive what God has for us. Because I know the many distractions that are out there and other things, you know, I know moms, dads, you're arguing with your kids coming in the room like, "Just get in there, get in there. Hi, how you doing?" Or you're arguing with your spouse like, "I didn't mean that. I'll put the towel up next time."

And there's so many things that can just draw our attention away from what God wants to do in our hearts and minds this morning. And I think it would help us to just surrender that to the Lord right now. So let's pray. Let's do that in this moment.

Jesus, we give you this time. We want you to have our full attention at this moment. And Lord, as we look through the Word of God, I pray that we would examine our hearts and minds and say, "Lord, what do you have for me today? What do you want to shift in my heart or my life today? What transformation needs to take place for me to be more obedient, to follow you more wholeheartedly, to express the truth of who I am in Christ more clearly to the world around me?"

So Lord, I pray that you would have your way with us, that we would trust in your Spirit, and we believe that you are going to do a work in our lives this morning. Amen.

Okay, verse one. We're going to start here. It says, "After this, Jesus went about to Galilee. He would not go about in Judea because the Jews were seeking to kill him."

By the way, when he references the Jews, typically think Jewish leaders, okay? So not all the Jews. There wasn't like a bounty on his head that anybody saw him. But there was a particular group within the Jews that were seeking to kill him.

And now, excuse me, I don't know what I inhaled. That was not good.

Alright, now the Jews' Feast of Booths was at hand. So his brothers said to him, "Leave here and go to Judea, that your disciples also may see the works you are doing. For no one works in secret if he seeks to be known openly. If you do these things, show yourself to the world."

For not even his brothers believed in him. That's right, guys. Jesus had brothers. And like your brothers, they don't really believe in you either. Okay? They just have to because their parents are making you do it. Maybe that's different for your family.

Verse 6: "Jesus said to them, 'My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify about it that its works are evil. You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.'"

Okay, let me set the scene. And we're going to get into our first true belief thing. Jesus, throughout the Book of John, keeps speaking over the heads of the people that are listening to him. Like, they keep expecting him to zig, and he always acts right.

Like, he has a conversation with Nicodemus, like, "Nicodemus, if you want to know God, you have to be born again." And Nicodemus is like, "What? What does that mean?" He has a conversation with the woman at the well, and he says, "Hey, I am the source of living water." And they're like, "You don't even have a bucket to draw water."

And in chapter 6, he has another one of these moments where he says these things to this group of people, disciples and followers. And he says, "Eat my flesh and drink of my blood." And they're like, "We're not cannibals."

And over and over and over and over again, Jesus is speaking over the heads on a spiritual plane, and those who are listening are not understanding at all. And now, at the end of chapter 6, remember, as Timmy taught last week, a majority of people had left, had stopped following Jesus, even to a point where he looks back and says, "Are you guys going to leave too?"

And Peter says those words, like, "Where else can we go? You have the words of eternal life." And there's this moment that's happening in the story where he leaves what he's doing, he goes back to Galilee, his hometown, and it seems like Jesus' ministry has begun to sputter out, it's begun to fail because people have stopped following him.

And his brothers come up with this idea, they're like, "Jesus, we gotta get back the momentum, go to Jerusalem, participate in the feast, have your disciples do the things that you always do. If you do that, then everyone will see and you'll get all those people back, they'll all come back and begin following you again." They're acting like they're producers.

And look at Jesus' response. He says two things, I want to focus on one, we'll focus on the other one later. But he says the first thing he says is, "My time has not yet come." In fact, he says it at the end of the sentence too, he says it again, he repeats it. "My time has not yet come."

And then the second thing he says is this, "Hey, they hate me because I tell them the truth. I tell them that the game they're playing, the religious game they're playing, is actually, like, I see through it, that they're not good, that their works are evil."

We're going to get to that in a minute. But I want you to see this. He says, "My time has not yet come." Write this down. "True belief trusts in God's timing."

True belief trusts in God's timing. Now, this sentence can be confusing because many times when Jesus talks about his time not coming, he's talking about his crucifixion, his death. But we know that he's not talking about this here for two reasons. One, whenever he talked about his time, he would use this Greek word, "hora," H-O-R-A, if you're trying to figure out how to spell that. But here he uses "keros."

But we also know by the actions that we see happening in a couple of verses where he goes down. Essentially, what Jesus is saying to his brothers is this: "I'm not going to trust in the wisdom of man. I'm not going to trust in trying to bring back the momentum, the big motivation, the big whatever. I'm not interested in any of that. I am completely submitted to the timetable of God. So I'm not going to go to the festival, even though it may be a good PR move for me and my ministry right now. And I'm not going to go loud. In fact, we're going to find out he's going to go quietly, he's going to go secretively. It's going to take them several days to find him, as we would find out.

And he enters into this position, this place of dispute. Some are saying, "Ah, he's probably a good guy." Some say, "He's probably a bad guy." Let me just have a quick note before we move on here. So quick stop. I won't miss you.

Listen, the movement of God, if not always, is mostly surrounded with disruption from the world, mostly disputed from the world. In fact, Jesus knows that. That's why in verse 7, he says, "Hey, look, I'm not going right now because they hate me and they are seeking to kill me." Why? Because I tell them that their works are evil.

Guys, you understand this. That the very beginning of the message of the Gospel is accepting this, is that we are sinful and broken and don't deserve a relationship with God. Offensive. That is an offensive message. See, what the Gospel tells us is that you're not friends with God, you're enemies with God. And since the world loves sin and hates the judge, of course they're going to have a problem with that message.

Think for a second. Look at Jesus' ministry. Was it disputed? Yes. Was it rejected? Absolutely. And Jesus did it perfectly. Why would we, as followers of Jesus, A, expect anything else, and B, seek the affirmation of the world in our ministry?

So often, I see Christians do things that I think are terribly unbiblical, that we seek the world's affirmation for the trueness and the purity of our religion in the acceptance of it. I'm baffled at the idea that sometimes I see Christians saying things like this: "I wish the Word of God didn't say that about sexuality." You wish that God didn't speak clearly about purity and goodness? That message doesn't save anyone.

I wish that God didn't have this line. There's something broken in our hearts in that moment. And the reason why I think we do it is because we're afraid of the discomfort of the opposition of the world. And if you are a Christ follower, you will live in opposition to the world. If Christ, too, lived perfectly, lived in opposition to the world, you will live in opposition to the world.

Now, let me make something clear. Jesus was not living in opposition to the world because he liked the fights. He was living in opposition to the world because who he was, at the very fiber of who he is, in his goodness and his holiness, was in opposition to a world that said good is bad, bad is good.

We, as Christians, are not meant to go look for fights, to go rage culture wars. But when we're at the fold on the Word of God, either in order to make things easy for us around others, we're going to have an enemy. Because there's an enemy that hates good.

So we should not be surprised. So Jesus shows up in the midst of this dispute that he's not afraid of, in the midst of this conflict that he's not afraid of. And in verse 14, they find him. This is about the middle of the feast. Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching.

And the Jews, therefore, marveled, saying, "How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?" So Jesus answered them, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority."

Write this down: "True belief desires to do the will of God."

See, they hear him teaching and they don't understand his teaching. And they ask this question, like, "How is he teaching this way?" And the reason why they're asking it, this is contextual, is because typically, when a Jew would teach, he would reference or cite the people he had learned from. Well, Jesus is only referencing the Bible. He's only referencing the Old Testament.

And they're saying, like, "How can he be saying this?" So Jesus looks at them and says, "Hey, I'll tell you my reference. I'll cite my work. God the Father. God the Father is my work. God the Father is the one that I learned from." And they still don't get it.

And he says, "If anyone's will is to do God's will, pay attention to this, guys. If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own authority." Did you catch what Jesus said? He just said, "To understand the truth of God, you need to have the heart posture that desires God."

You see that? He says, "You want to know what it is? If my teachings are good, then you have to be the kind of person that is seeking after God, and God the Father will reveal it to you." What Jesus is saying is that knowing is not a matter of the mind. It's a matter of the heart. It's a matter of the will.

See, we think in this world, like, "Man, if I just have the right information, then I can make a good choice." But Jesus is saying something counter to that. He's saying, "It's not about your mind and the information. It's about your heart and your posture to it."

He's saying, "Hey, are you going to submit to me as leader and authority of your life?" Like, another way Jesus could be saying this is this: "In other words, if you want to know the will of God, you first have to desire to submit to His will, even before you even know what that is."

I have a daughter, Gracie. She's four, and she constantly comes up to me and just is like, and everyone who has a kid knows exactly what that is. And I just, you know, I pick her up and she's just like, and this is her, she's like, "Hey, I just want to go. Like, there's no agenda. She's like, 'I just want to be with you. I want to go where you want to go. I want to do what you want to do.'"

And like, my daughter never comes up to me and goes, "Hold on, before I raise my hands up, let's talk about where we're going to go and what we're going to do and your criteria is to take me there." Of course not, because she's expressing childlike dependence. She's saying, "I just want to be with you. I don't, it doesn't matter where we go. I want to be with you."

Guys, that is the posture that God is looking for in His followers. That is the posture that God is asking us to have. There is no category that we can approach God with proud hearts and expect Him to allow us to know His truths. We can't look at God and be like, "What's your credentials? What's your plan? Tell me and I'll tell you if I'm going to get on board with it."

He's the God of the universe, okay? You are due on the grass, you are gone so quickly. See, faith precedes reason, not the other way around. Faith is not void of reason, but faith precedes it.

Haven't we seen that before? Christians in the room, haven't you had someone you love dearly that you start sharing the gospel with them and they're just like, "Why is all these questions?" And so you just start going down these days and weeks of just meeting with them and talking them and answering all of their questions to the point where they're like, "Yeah, I just don't have a rebuttal to that."

And then you get to the end of it and they're just like, "Well, I just don't believe." And there's like this mountain of evidence that they said they needed in order to believe and they don't believe. Don't we see it in the picture in the story of Jesus? They just miracle after miracle that the greatest teachers of Jerusalem, he just befuddles them. They have no idea what to do with them.

That every trap he just wiggles out of, just finesses it perfectly over and over and over and over again. And at the end, what we see is that the Jews look at him and say, "Just give us another sign and we'll believe."

We don't have an evidence problem with God. We have a heart posture problem with God. See, what Jesus is saying is those who desire to do the will of God, God reveals His truth to those people. He reveals His truth to those kind of believers.

Here's the question this morning: Do you desire to do God's will? Or does your desire have an asterisk next to it? Like, "Lord, I follow you, but please don't send me overseas." "Lord, I'll submit to you, but let me have some years in college first." "Lord, I'll follow you, but don't make me uncomfortable around my co-workers, the guys who go to the gym with, my neighbors, my classmates, my roommates."

"I'll follow you as long as you don't do those things, but once you call me into those things, I'm going to step to the side and then I'll step back on was something I really want to do." True belief seeks to do the will of God no matter what it is, because it has the underlying belief that there is no greater voice than God in a person's life, and there is no better direction to go.

Look at verse 18. He says, "The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood."

Here's the last statement: "True belief pursues God's glory."

You see what Jesus just said in verse 18? He's saying, "I am radically committed to the pursuit of God's glory being magnified." It's like all of my teachings, all the things that I do are about the Father and pointing people to Him. He's not coming here self-exalting Himself, but Jesus showed up as a servant, saved the lost, the broken, and the sick.

In the next couple of verses, 19 through 24, He's going to hold a mirror up to them and say, "This is how different you are from me." Look at 19. He says, "Has not Moses given you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?"

The crowd answered, "You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you?" When He says, "You have a demon," right there, by the way, this little contextual thing, that's just like the Jewish way of saying, "You're crazy." That's just like the Jewish way of saying, "You're crazy." He's a crazy man. Like, he's imagining things.

And Jesus answered them, "But we know He's not, because they're going to kill Him." And Jesus answers them, "I did one work, and all of you marveled at it. Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers. And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with the right judgment."

Let me explain what's happening. Jesus looks at them and says, "Hey, the Jews are mad at me because they're claiming I broke the Mosaic law. They're saying, 'He's saying that Jews are mad at Jesus because they're claiming that he broke the Mosaic law by healing a man on the Sabbath, and they're trying to use that to discredit him.'

But Jesus brings up a few things. One, he says, 'Hey, you allow circumcision to happen on the Sabbath.' Now, what Jesus isn't doing, he's not looking at them saying, 'You break the Sabbath too.' He's actually bringing up something that the Jewish leaders are conveniently ignoring, that for Jews, there was a category of things that you could do on the Sabbath.

And what Jesus is saying, if circumcision falls in there, you also know that healing a person, that saving a person's life belongs there as well. But you're just ignoring it in order to try to slander me. You're just trying to use the law as a bat to try to beat me down, as you, the person who actually does not break the law, while you, as the person that breaks law, ignores portions of it.

Do you see what Jesus is saying here? He's looking at them and saying, 'I keep the law for the glory of God, but you take what was meant to be a mirror of your brokenness and a need for a savior, and you use it as a spotlight to point to your performance in God, and you lie while you do it. You're faking it. It's a big fake phony show. You're weaponizing it.'

That their following of the law was not about glorifying God, but about self-exaltation of themselves. Christians, listen to me in the room. That means that there's a way that you can be obedient to God, but it'll all be about glorifying yourself, all about exalting yourself and what a good person you are. But that's not true belief in God. True belief in God seeks the glory of God.

See, Jesus was fully obedient to God's law to bring glory to the Father, and they only obeyed to bring glory to themselves. But Jesus did not do that. He gives us this beautiful picture of what absolute and complete obedience looks like to God in every aspect.

Now, I want to say one last thing. These people that meant to condemn Jesus by saying that he was self-exalting, he was the only one that could actually rightfully self-exalt himself because he was perfect. But what we learn in Scripture is that he lowered himself, took on the form of a servant, not taking advantage of any of his deity, and humbled himself even to death as a man on a cross so that we could be forgiven.

And that those who believe would have life in his name. See, true belief trusts in God's timing. That is what he did when he went to Jerusalem, not to exalt himself as a king, but to be lifted up on a cross. True belief desires to do God's will, and that's exactly what Jesus did when he was in the garden. He said, "Not my will, but your will be done."

True belief pursues God's glory when the wrath of the Father was poured out on the Son so that mercy and grace could be accredited to us. True belief was perfectly put in the picture of Jesus.

So now, us, so us who are Christ followers, do you see this? That we can have true belief in Jesus because he first had it. Christians, do you see that we can have true belief because Jesus Christ first did that on our behalf? That Jesus was perfectly obedient, and because he has done it perfectly, he can accredit to us as if we did it ourselves.

That he trusted perfectly in God's timing, he desired his will perfectly, and he pursued God's glory perfectly. Now, every single one of us that calls Christ our Lord and Savior is accredited that belief as if we accomplished it on our own. Do you see that, Christian? Do you rejoice in that?

Seeker in the room, do you understand it's not about what you do, but it's about what Christ does? You are not saved by trying to perform better before God, but trusting in the perfect work of Christ and what he has done on our behalf.

Now, because of that, through the work of the Holy Spirit working in a Christian's life, we can walk these truths out. We will never do it perfectly, but it will be accredited to us as if we have, because of Christ.

Let me pray.

Jesus, thank you so much for this truth, this picture of your work, this goodness of belief that you have accredited to us. Lord, I pray that we would walk more in the truth of your timing, of your will, for your glory.

That Mercy Hill Church would not be a group of people that seek their own glory and want to use you to do it. That Mercy Hill Church would not be a group of people that thinks their timing is better than God's, but waits patiently in suffering.

That Mercy Hill Church would not be a group of people that desires their own will and not God's. You have done this perfectly and have accredited to us as we have done it. And we give thanks to you.

And Lord, we also want to live like you have lived. We want to follow your ethics, follow your example, and be a picture of Christ to those around us. Not so that everyone would agree with us, but so people can see foretastes and pictures of the gospel and have an opportunity to receive mercy and grace as we have received it.

I pray that you would bless these men and women with your presence and your leadership and your closeness. We love you, Jesus. Praise you. Amen.