Venture on him, venture wholly,
let no other trust intrude. You can rest the weight of your
eternal soul on the Lord Jesus Christ and never, ever be disappointed. He is able. I want us to turn back to John
chapter 7. I love how the chapter divisions are helpful for us
in so many ways, but I love the picture at the end of it. Jesus
went unto the Mount of Olives and every man went to his own
house. He had no house. house, our Saviour,
and he was very happy to go to the Mount of Olives, and the
Mount of Olives on his own was in that garden at the foot of
the Mount of Olives that he first began that awful process of bearing
the weight of our sins in his body on the tree, and when he
looked in that cup and he saw the sins of all of his people.
God Almighty had a broken heart and blood, great drops of blood
fell to the ground. We have a glorious Saviour, we
have a Saviour who shed his life's blood for his people and here
he is in John chapter 7 revealing to us his journey to Jerusalem and
revealing the hearts of people to him. And I want us to spend
some time in this first session just looking at what it is for
these people to be the brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ. And
I want us to look at, I'll just read these first 10 verses again.
After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee for he would not walk
in Jewry. He wouldn't walk with the Jews
because the Jews sought to kill him. He wasn't afraid of the
Jews. He never was afraid of the Jews. He had a work to do
in Galilee, and he had a work to do in Jerusalem, and he does
go down there again and again and again. But he won't go down
there just for the sake of controversy. He'll go at his time. He'll go
at his time, and he'll go for his purpose. Now the Jews' feast
of tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto
him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also
may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth
anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If
you do these things, show yourself to the world, because For neither
did his brethren believe in him. Then Jesus said unto them, My
time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world
cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that
the works thereof are evil. "'Go ye up unto this feast. "'I go not up yet unto this feast,
"'for my time is not yet full come.'" He's talking about that
time, isn't he? Everything he does is according
to his time and his purpose, and the time that he's ultimately
speaking about is the time of him going to the cross. That
was his time. It's not yet full come. "'And
when he had said these words unto them, "'he abode still in
Galilee, "'but his brethren were gone up. Then went he also up
unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. He wasn't
hiding himself from them, he just wasn't going there to make
a public show of his activities. And certainly as you heard later
on in the chapter, he does go to that feast and he does go
to the temple and he does make himself very, very well known. I want us to spend a little bit
of time just looking at his brethren and I want us us believers to contemplate that
the trials that all of us go through in this world are trials
that the Lord Jesus Christ went through. I've been thinking about
this a lot over this last little while and there is a private
conversation that believers have amongst other believers that
they don't have with the world and it's not expressed to other
people. is witnessed here in the fact
that these brethren were the brothers and cousins and the
family of the Lord Jesus Christ. You might have recalled in John
chapter 6 there was an enormous crowd that followed the Lord
Jesus Christ. They saw remarkable miracles. And then when he described
who he was, they all fled. And there was just one group
of 12 that stayed. And they were the disciples,
and then amongst them was a man, Judith, who was a devil according
to God. But there's another group that
can't leave, because there is family. they're
always going to be his family, just like all of our children
and cousins and others are part of our family. And here's the
Lord Jesus Christ dealing with his brethren, and his brethren
are unbelievers. And of all the conversations
I've had with my brothers and sisters in Christ over the years,
I'm not sure how often, but almost invariably we come to talk about
people that we love. that we've grown up with, that
we are close to, and privately we agonize over their eternal
souls. And we have come, as we read
in Psalm 126, we've come to those waters, we've come to that stream
of living water, and we've come and our hearts have been glad.
And immediately we want to go to our brothers and sisters and
our family and say, found. This is true. I remember when
the Lord first did a work in my life, the first thing I wanted
to do was go and see my brother and sister. The first thing I
had to go and tell them, I said, look it's true. I didn't realise
how true it was. It's really true. He really is
who he said he is. He really did what he said he
was going to do. And I thought this would be so
wonderful and such great news for them that they would be excited. I was expecting them to be excited
with me. A little while later, my sister
came to me and she said, I'm just, I'm really sad. I just
want to talk to you. I don't believe that you're my
brother anymore. And it wasn't true at all. I
loved her more than I could possibly express. But she was expressing
the fact that now I had another allegiance and she was aware
of it. And she has assiduously, for
the last 20 odd years, avoided any conversation about anything
I do. We were five years in India, five years with our family in
India, and there's absolutely no way in the world she or my
brother would ever talk about what we did, and even ask a question,
because they just didn't want, they didn't want that door into
that which mattered most in our lives, the he, the who, who mattered
most in our lives to be expressed. And so believers are then sort
of left in this place where they talk amongst each other and then
they wait and they pray and they have the same agonies and pains
that are expressed In the Lord Jesus, of course, he knows all
things and one of the things that's wonderful about this story,
as sad as it is and as revealing of unbelief and as revealing
of faith are these verses here before us, one of the glorious
things is that a number of these brethren were saved. saved after
the resurrection and the brother of the Lord Jesus Christ, James,
was head of the church. Jude wrote a book. And so as
much as we spend our time agonizing over it, we do have a great and
glorious God. I'm thankful. I'm thankful, as
I said earlier, that the Lord went through the same trials
that we went through. I'm thankful that he was seen by his family
as being someone who had lost the plot. And I'm absolutely
convinced in Mark chapter 3, when Mary and his brothers and
sisters had come to him, they were concerned about these reports
that we read in John chapter 7, isn't it? That the Jews wanted
to kill him. Their response to God Almighty was to put him to
death. And so with us, as believers,
we have these conversations so often, don't we? We have them
amongst ourselves and nearly all of our communication is private
and in our closet with just us and God and we're pleading. We're
pleading. We want what is best for these
eternal souls of everyone. that we meet. Always, we're always
long. And we long and we wait expectantly. See, love brings pain. Love brings pain. Love brings
tears. Love brings agonising. I'm talking about the love of
the Lord Jesus Christ revealed in us and to us. And love also
brings a questioning to us, doesn't it? You know, have I witnessed
faithfully enough And we are aware, the children of God are
aware of our infirmities in our flesh and we are mindful of the
fact that so often in our desire we have somehow seemingly hindered
the gospel rather than caused it to be declared as faithfully
as it ought. So we always find the deficiency
and we always blame ourselves. I do anyway, I'm not sure, I
can't speak for everyone else, but I always think, I just wish
I'd said that a little bit better, I wish I'd said that a little
bit more clearly, I'd wish the words were better. And we keep
praying, don't we? I love what Paul said several times in the
New Testament. He prayed for a door of utterance
to be opened. God says in Revelation, He's
placed a door before you, a door that's open and no man can shut
it. It's a door, but so often we find that there's a door that's
barred and closed to conversations. But we are children of hope and
we are children of expectation and we look over the horizon
of this world. I hope you do anyway. I look
over the horizon of this world with expectation. Our God is
big. Our God has saved all of these
people from the foundation of the world. Our God will bring
his people to himself when he says, when I'm lifted up, I will
draw. all people to myself. And so let's just have a brief
look at this earthly family of the Lord Jesus Christ. As you
know, so well, Jesus was born in a remarkable way. He wasn't
stained with the sin of Adam's fallen nature. It was, as Luke
says, that holy thing which is conceived in you is of the Holy
Spirit. And he was born, as the scriptures
say, so clearly he was born in Bethlehem, And you know the story
of his birth and the rejoicing from heaven when the saviour
of the world, our God, had come into this world to live amongst
us and to save his people from their sins. And you know the
story of what happened in Bethlehem, Herod acting like Satan wanted
to kill him and so the solution for him was to actually commit
an act of of murder against every child in Bethlehem who was two
years old and younger. So at some stage between the
Lord's birth and his being two years old he was taken to Egypt
and then Mary and Joseph returned to Nazareth and they had a family.
And you can read about them in Mark chapter 6 and it would appear
that Joseph had died. Joseph was certainly alive when
the Lord Jesus Christ was 12 years of age. And they went to
Jerusalem and the Lord was speaking to the Pharisees and the teachers
there and was astounding them at how much he knew of the scriptures
when he was 12 years of age. But it seems from all the Gospel
accounts that Joseph was no longer there. So at some stage in his
years and maybe in his teenage years, Jesus became the head
of that family and he was called the carpenter in Mark chapter
6, the son of Mary, the brother of James and Joseph and Judah
and Simon and then they say his sisters are here with us. And
so this nonsense that people want to do to declare that Mary
somehow remained a perpetual virgin, that somehow she was
actually raised up above the rest of humanity because of that.
I do love what she said, didn't she? She said in Luke chapter
46 when she prayed that prayer, Luke chapter 1 verse 46 and 47,
she says, doth magnify the Lord, and my
spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. Mary needed a Saviour
just like the rest of Adam's race. Mary needed the Lord Jesus
Christ to die for her sins like everyone else did. Mary and Joseph
were children of Adam. She was remarkable in so many
ways, and Joseph as well, but nevertheless they were just like
the rest of humanity. They were sinners in need of
a Saviour. But when the Lord Jesus Christ
was revealed in his baptism and the heavens were opened and the
Spirit as a dove ascended on him, there was a revealing of
him in his ministry and from there on in his family. as significant
as they were, became not the significant thing in his life.
And he had an earthly family like we did, who were mentioned
here in John 7, and he had a heavenly family, didn't he? And so every
day for all believers there's a challenge of priorities and
a choice, isn't there, between our spiritual and heavenly family
and our earthful earthly and carnal family. And there is a
test, there's a test all the time, isn't it, of allegiance
and a test of how we conduct ourselves with our earthly family
and how we do prioritise in our hearts. We have to prioritise
our heavenly family and our relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ is a
relationship that is a heart relationship. where He takes
the hearts of His people and they belong to Him. And that
doesn't mean for one moment that we stop loving our earthly family
and caring for them and acting responsibly in every way before
them. But nevertheless, Our earthly family cannot come between us
and the Lord and us and our true brethren. God will have your
heart, brothers and sisters. He'll take your heart captive.
The Lord has his people in this world and they're born His people
are born, not of flesh and blood. But as many as received Him,
and there was an active reception of Him, to them gave He power
to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name,
which were born, not of blood, not of your earthly parentage,
not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, not of your supposed
free will, nor of the will of man. you are born of God and
John goes on in 1st John chapter 2 to say that if you are born
of God you love him who has birthed you and if you love him who has
birthed you, you love all those A God-created love relationship
between the children of God. We are taught of God, says 1
Thessalonians chapter 4. We are taught of God to love
one another. We're taught of God to love one
another. I love what Galatians 4 says,
it says, When did you become sons? You were sons before the
foundation of the world. Because you are sons, God sends
the spirit of his son into our heart and we cry, Abba, Father. We call our Father with the same
name that the Lord Jesus Christ calls His. And earthly families,
of course, are a picture of the true heavenly family. They have
the same Father, they have the same Mother. Galatians says that
we're all born from this one Mother, the Jerusalem which is
above is the Mother of us all. And we have the same family bonds,
and the marriage between a husband and wife is a picture, as Ephesians
5 says, is a picture of Christ and His Church, His Bride. And
we have our earthly families and we love them, but compared
to our love for Him, It appears as hatred, and yet there's no
hatred in the heart of God's people and God's not calling
upon us to hate them. But such is what the Lord Jesus
Christ said, isn't it, in Luke chapter 4, 14 verse 26. He is
speaking. the cost of disciples. He said,
If any man come to me and hate not his father and mother and
wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own
life also. Don't miss that. And he's not
talking about us hating them that way, it's just in terms
of priorities. The Lord Jesus Christ takes his people captive.
He takes his people captive by the beauty of who he is, he takes
his people captive by the beauty of what he done, the wonder of
what he done, what he has done. He takes his people captive by
revealing to them the truth, and he takes his people captive
by setting them free from all the things of this world that
entangle them. He came not to bring peace in
this world, but a division. He says, Suppose not, Luke 12.51, suppose
ye that I have come to give peace on earth, I tell you no, but
rather division. For from henceforth there shall
be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against
three. The father shall be divided against
the son, and the son against the father, and the mother against
the daughter, and the daughter against the mother, and the mother-in-law
against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against
the mother-in-law. This is the promise of God, brothers
and sisters, which is why church and the gathering of believers
together is so precious. It was really sad. We live in
a very tolerant world where we're all very nice to each other.
One of the things that was remarkable about India was how raw life
was. You saw dead bodies on the streets.
You saw people with leprosy. You saw the depravity of man
on display. One of the things that was really,
really convicting for me over there was that when you were
born into the part of the world where I was in India, you were
given a Hindu God's name. So it's part of your name and
part of your family name is the name of the Hindu God. And so
when someone was converted and baptized, they would change their
name and they would get rid of their Hindu God name and they
would take a name and nearly always they were Bible names. One of my dear friends over there
was a pastor called James and he had the misfortune of being
a Tamil, which was bad enough in Indian context because you're
dark-skinned and the Indians prefer light-skinned people.
But James was black. James was the darkest Indian
I'd ever seen, which meant that it was very difficult for him
to find a wife. But he did end up finding a wife and sadly,
before they could have children. He had a brain tumour and died.
But James used to go back to his village to his father and
to his family and he would take gifts and he would take chocolates
back to his father and try and make a peace offering and just
try not to convert them, but just try to be a son again. to try and the father would pick
up these chocolates, these expensive chocolates and other things and
he would throw them on the ground and said, you are not my son.
I am not your father. It was one of the things that
was very challenging for me over there. There was a cost to be
paid for owning the Lord Jesus Christ. And we don't pay that
cost here very often. We do privately and we do amongst
ourselves. But nevertheless, the Lord says
there is a cost. There is a cost to be paid. And
so, here is our Saviour with His family. Here is our Saviour
with His brethren, who have seen the most remarkable things that
you could ever wish to see, for all of their lives they lived
in the house where God Almighty lived. For all of their lives
they lived with someone who never had an evil thought, an evil
word, did an evil deed. They lived in the midst of someone
who loved God perfectly, and yet, and yet, they didn't believe. And it's just a glorious reminder,
isn't it, that salvation is of the Lord, and salvation is not
the work of man. Salvation is the work of God. The triune God, and as I said
earlier, one of the things that comforts me about this passage
of Scripture, these people acted in wicked, wicked, wicked unbelief,
and yet the Lord Jesus Christ on Calvary's tree bore the sins
of these brethren in his own body on the tree. and he paid the price for it. He paid the price and he cried
out, he just finished all the debts paid him for, even the
debt of some of these brethren. And so we have a gospel that
the religious world sees as a hard saying and it's a rock of offence. It's a rock of offence to man's
religion and it's a rock of offence to man's righteousness and it's
a rock of offence to man's notion of God and God's accusation against
humanity in the Old Testament is this, That's the beginning
of all our problems. You thought that I was altogether
such a one as you. You think! In our imagination
we're always in the business of reducing God down to something
that is manageable in some way by us. And so the brethren had
no idea that God was in their midst and they wanted Him to
be reconciled to the world. wanted him to be reconciled to
the religious world. They didn't go to the Jews and
say, you come back and see this remarkable man and listen to
these remarkable words and bear witness to these remarkable miracles. The world and our worldly family
will always be wanting us to be reconciled in the wrong direction,
always away from reconciliation with the Lord. And the world,
and the religious world especially, find the shame of who we are
because of who we believe. And they can't stop being related
to us. If I'd become a Catholic priest,
my sister would have been rejoicing. If I'd become a Buddhist, the
world would have told me how wonderful I was. If I'd done
all sorts of other things. It's owning Christ and standing
for the Lord Jesus Christ that is the offense in this world. We go to them in love. And we stand aside from mainstream
religion. These men were off to a feast.
They were joining mainstream religion, and they're saying,
well, you just come. You just come with us. The Lord Jesus dealt with these
men in faithfulness. He told them the truth, didn't
he? He told them the truth of who they were. He told them the
truth of their religion. And so what's our response, brothers
and sisters? I love what Henry May had said
to a young pastor going to his first pastor. He said, you love
them to Christ. You love them. We have no reason
to hate them. We have every reason to love
them. And we witness. Our witness is not without effect. And we don't know when words
said will have an impact on the hearts of people. And we long
for an opportunity to to witness. And the gospel that we declare
here is the gospel that God sees is the power of God unto salvation. I love the fact that it's not
my power, it's God's power and it's the power of God unto salvation. And so we, as we go through John
chapter 7, we'll see that the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the
deeds of all humanity to be evil and so in salvation we haven't
become better than them. We haven't become better. In
fact, In true salvation we become aware of what we really are and
what we have to be saved from. We become for the first time
aware of the fact that we are sinners, real sinners, not pretend
sinners. And so as real sinners saved
by the Lord Jesus Christ we haven't got any righteousness to brag
about and we don't behave as if we're better than them and
holier than them. We are different but we're not
better. And our gospel should cause us
to be glad. Our gospel should cause us to
rejoice. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Our gospel should allow us to
enjoy the good things that God has given us in this world. And
we pray, and we wait, and we hope, And we understand that
the Lord went through these same agonies and the Lord who knows
the end from the beginning knew that these were rebellious but
saved people. And we don't know who the rebellious
but saved people are. We know all the rebellious ones.
Every single child of Adam is rebellious. But we don't know
when what the Scriptures declare to be the time of love comes. And we're excited about that.
He saved wretches like us, brothers and sisters. Is there any reason
that he won't save a multitude of others? If he saves the chief
of sinners, there's no one shut out. Our God is big and glorious. So how do we behave? I just want
to turn to one scripture in 2 Timothy 2, and I've found this really,
really helpful, really helpful. He says in verse 22 of 2 Timothy
2, he says, flee youthful lusts, but follow righteousness, faith,
charity, which is love, peace, with them that call on the Lord
out of a pure heart. But foolish and unlearned questions
avoid, knowing that they do gender strifes. So as soon as there's
strife, what do you do? You leave immediately. You don't
leave them physically, but there's absolutely nothing ever gained
by us having debates and arguments. We won in the early days of our
church. We won hundreds and thousands of arguments. You cannot argue
against who the Lord Jesus Christ is out of this book. You cannot
argue against salvation, life, fury, and sovereign grace. You
cannot argue and win about what the Lord Jesus Christ did on
the cross. But we thought that we could win people over by debating. And we never ever, we won every
debate and never achieved a single thing. We don't have to, we just
avoid them. He says avoid them, knowing that
they engender strife. And the servant of the Lord must
not strive, verse 24, but be gentle unto all men. apt to teach, waiting for an
opportunity to teach, waiting for an opportunity for a door
to be opened, for a question to be asked, apt to teach, patient,
waiting on the Lord and waiting on His time, in meekness, instructing
those who oppose themselves, in meekness, They are sinners, brothers and
sisters. They are blind. There's no point
arguing with a blind person about their blindness. The solution
is, if the Lord opens the door, we proclaim the Lord Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. But they're opposing themselves,
aren't they? So their opposition, their opposition
that they might reflect to you is an opposition against themselves.
If, per adventure, God will give them repentance to the acknowledging
of the truth. Where does repentance come from?
Where does a change of mind about who God is, a change of mind
about who you are and a change of mind about how God saves sinners,
that's repentance. It's the gift of God. God will
give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth and that they may
recover themselves out of the snare of the devil who are taken
captive by him at his will. You're dealing with a much, much
bigger enemy. you'll be dealing with a much, much more ferocious
captor. You're dealing with one who has
a palace and he keeps his goods in peace in his palace. And I
do love the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ can recover them.
There's a glorious picture in the Old Testament, isn't it,
of the Lord Jesus Christ recovering his people. He was stuck in Gaza
and they didn't want him in there and the Lord picked up the gates
of Gaza and the bars and the posts. which is his church, he carried
them there, and he opened up that city to let his people out. How far did he carry those gates? 80 kilometers, and he set them down
in Hebron, which is the city of refuge, a picture of himself. He will come at the time of his
love, and he will set his people free. We have a gospel which should
give us great confidence, brothers and sisters. And in the midst
of all of our trials and pains, we have a great and glorious
God who cannot fail. He cannot fail. Let's have a break and come back
and sing and look at John chapter 7. Thank you.