Unbelief and Belief (John 12:37-50)

I got the opportunity to give the talk at Youth on Friday night. I gave a shorter version of this on Wednesday to the residents of a retirement village. I have to say more people at the old age home laughed at the "Peanuts" comic than at Youth, even though there were probably three times as many at Youth...

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Today in our passage we are talking about not believing and believing in Jesus.
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In John’s Gospel, we come to quite a significant turning point in the book. Some people break the whole Gospel between Chapters 12 and 13. The first half of this Gospel is kind of an account of Jesus’ public ministry. John has been pointing out many signs of Jesus, showing that Jesus has the power of God. Jesus has said a bunch of things about Himself, that have upset people, as He was claiming to be God himself.
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From chapter 13 onward it is the night before Jesus’ crucifixion and is all about His teachings for His disciples, Jesus' death and His resurrection appearances.
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And so we come to the climax at the end of this movement in John’s Gospel. And here Jesus has the final words and sums up His agenda about believing in Him.

Unbelief

‌We see in verse 37 till verse 41 that

Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him. (John 12:37 NIV)

You might sometimes wish that if only you saw Jesus doing the things recorded that you might have more faith. But John is really honest here - even though Jesus did a bunch of miracles people still did not follow Him, they did not think Jesus was God.
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And this was no surprise, for this has been always the way. Some people do not believe. (I know we are meant to stick to the text at hand), but it reminds me of the end of Matthew. Jesus has died and risen again. Jesus has hung out and taught a bunch of people and just before Jesus gives the great commission and ascends into heaven it says

When they saw him, they worshiped him; but some doubted. (Matthew 28:17 NIV)

The risen Lord had done His thing, and a bunch of people are worshipping for the great news of salvation and life eternal, and even at that point we are told “but some doubted”.
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Like what more do you need? Does one guy turn to someone in the crowd and go, “You know, I’m not sure about how great Jesus' resurrection is, I got a cousin Hank who did that last month too”.
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And what John is saying in these quotations of Isaiah, is that belief isn’t an intellectual thing. That there is something more going on.
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We kind of think if we knew the right answers and could persuade our friends of the coherence of the Gospel they would just believe. That if we could just answer all things, say all the right smart words they too would believe.
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But that is not true, that implies that the only reason you are a Christian is because you made the smart intellectual decision. That your friends just aren’t smart enough and you are.
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But that is not the case. Just look at those who are Christians, and I don’t mean that as an insult. I push on doors that say pull. I have verbal arguments in the shower with people I will never meet with and pretend I’m smart. I can’t spell most longish words. I was best man for a guy who was a Christian. He got his head stuck in a glove box of a car because when you head goes in one way, your ears act as locks on the way out.
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We have children at our church with a belief in Jesus. There are people in our church who have intellectual problems who have never gone to uni, who will never work a full-time job, who the world would overlook and they believe Jesus to be true. We also have doctors, lawyers, and academic PhDs in our church.
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Belief is not an IQ test.
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And John quotes Isaiah saying the reason people do no believe is because they are blind, because their hearts were hardened. In Isaiah 6 where this quote comes from, God gives Isaiah his sending orders, or his mission statement to preach to the nation of Israel. Isaiah is to preach to the people that they will not hear, that they will not understand what God is doing. Isaiah is like great, how long do I say this and the answer is: until everything is in ruins and they have been exiled and forsaken. Kind of a tough gig, but the thing was this was a judgment on Israel for their ongoing disobedience towards God.
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And John lifts these verses to say, that those who have seen Jesus and do not believe, do so out of judgement for their disobedience. Isaiah’s preaching only harden the people of His day, Jesus' signs and teaching also did the same. In a sense Jesus harden them, by His presence, their reaction was in the negative to what He had done.
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We must also remember that this is not a blanket ban on everyone not believing and that we don’t know the final landing of anyone, but that people do move from blindness to light. For God is sovereign in this area and we know there are people who do believe.

Kind of belief

‌In verses 42-43 we see another category of people to do with belief.

Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in him. But because of the Pharisees they would not openly acknowledge their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved human praise more than praise from God. (John 12:42–43 NIV)

Some people did believe, but they hid their faith because they were afraid of what others would think of them. They didn’t want to be kicked out of their synagogue or community. Did you do the story of the blind man who was healed and his parents were brought up the front and they didn’t want to say one way or the other about Jesus because they didn’t want to be kicked out of the synagogue. This was a real fear, as they didn’t want to be on the out. Later in the story Joseph and Nicodemus who was on some important Jewish council request Jesus' body to bury, but they did so in secret so their peers wouldn’t hack on them (19:38)
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These people, who want to believe in Jesus but don’t want anyone else to know it, cuts me a little. I think when I was your age in high school I was one of these type of believers. I would be the good kid at school and now swear, but I didn’t really talk about Jesus, or read my Bible, but on Sundays, I would do the church thing. I was sort of a Sunday Christian, but not really a Wednesday afternoon one, and the main reason was because I didn’t want to be seen as too weird to my friends. I didn’t want to be that guy. I was scared of what they really thought.
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Are you like that? A Friday night Christian but not a Friday day Christian? Stick around and listen to Jesus teachings in the next section of John, how disciples are to be in the world but not of. That followers of Jesus live in a way so that the world around them will know who they are. There is very little evidence in the Bible that suggests you can be a hidden believer, so can I ask come in. Trust fully in Jesus and in doing that you get God.

Believing and Seeing

Our last group of people are about those who beleive.

Then Jesus cried out, “Whoever believes in me does not believe in me only, but in the one who sent me. The one who looks at me is seeing the one who sent me. (John 12:44–45 NIV)

Here Jesus is talking about believing and seeing, but not just in Him. Jesus is saying that He is so connected with His Father that when you believe in Him you are believing in God. Jesus was sent by God and is saying and doing the things God has told Him to do.
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To believe in Jesus is trusting or accepting that His words are true.
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I am not a sports person. My wife watches more sports than me. But elite athletes have sometimes multiple coaches, telling them to do certain things to get better. They will be told to do running, or weights and what exercises or drills to do over and over again. In all this, what is asked of them may hurt, but that sportsperson has to trust that the coach knows better, that they know how to help them be better at performing. When you truly believe in a person's authority, you follow that person in complete obedience.
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Jesus is asking people to believe in Him, which means for us not to just know a few facts about Him, but to trust Him to give the right direction for our lives. True believers follow. It leads to a change of mind and action.
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Jesus tells those around Him, that if you can see Him you can see God. This is a massive claim, and we may envy the disciples back then, for we can not see Jesus how they could. We have this historical gap that we can go back and see.
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But later in John’s Gospel, after Jesus rose again and Thomas said he wouldn’t believe in the resurrection until he has seen and touched Jesus. After he had that chance, Jesus tell him

“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29 NIV)

We can be blessed, here, in our time for trusting in Jesus with our life, and in trusting in Jesus, we are also trusting in the Father, for they are intimately connected.
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There are many famous gateways around the world. In China, there is what is called the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Tiananmen which is the main entrance to their Forbidden City. San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge which spans their bay. These gates take you through to something else, and Jesus is the gateway to God.
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Trust in Jesus is trust in God the Father who sent Jesus. Seeing Jesus is seeing the Father. How do we know God is real and true, we look to Jesus.
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Light in Darkness

‌And Jesus came in verse 45 as the light, so that no one who believes in Him should stay in darkness.
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Naturally, apart from Christ, we all loved darkness (3:19) for we do not want to be found out for what we have done. We have all rebelled against God and do not want to be found out.
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But Jesus is the light, He brings the teachings of God, the healing of God the signs of God to a world in darkness. In one sense we could say Jesus shines a light on our deeds and exposes them. But those who trust in Jesus do not stand condemned in the spotlight. Instead, Jesus has come to rescue us from our darkness.

For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. (John 3:17 NIV)

The good news is that, even though we were in darkness, those who believe in Jesus are saved.
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Jesus speaks the Father's words, which leads to Eternal life
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So we are to trust Jesus and what he says, for his words are not only His own but His Father's. This means if you reject Jesus’ words you are rejecting God’s words, but on the flip side, if you accept Jesus’ words you accept God’s words. And these words are good. In verse 50 Jesus says His commands lead to eternal life.
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This life is not all that we have. It is short, full of ups and downs, but that is not all that we have.
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There is an old Charlie Brown comic where Lucy is trying to help Charlie. She says life is like a deck chair on a cruise ship. Some people put their chairs a the back of the boat to see where they have been, and some put their chairs at the front to see where they are going. Lucy ask Charlie which he was, and he said, “I can’t even get my chair unfolded”.
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You might feel like that with life, I don’t know what I am doing. But the good news is that Jesus came to give us life in abundance. This is a gift, that we did not deserve but was graciously given to us because God loves the world, even in its darkness, even when it rejected Him.
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The gift of eternal life should give us hope, that this life isn’t all that we have. That God has come down and rescued us because He loved us.
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So who are you? Do you not believe even though you have heard a bunch of this stuff before and your heart isn’t in it? Do you believe a bit, but not willing to go public with it, or do you believe and trust Jesus as God? That you know you have been saved from darkness into Jesus’ light?
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I pray that you will believe in Jesus and in doing so, we will believe in God. Let us trust Him with our life, even when it is hard. For Jesus is God and came to save us.