Is This the Christ?

Amen.

Well, good morning, church.

Hey, my name is Justin, and I'm one of the pastors here at Sacred Mission.

My joy to bring God's word to you this morning.

So last week we were talking about truth at all costs, right?

And the cost of truth.

And we talked about how Jesus was willing to pay that cost because of the life that truth brings to us as his image bearers.

And this morning we're going to be looking at the truth of who the true Jesus is.

I think it's pretty obvious that in the context we find ourselves in in society, many people don't really have too much of an issue saying, oh yeah, I believe in God.

I believe in Jesus, right?

But as we press in or we try to investigate further what they mean when they say that, we discover that they really believe in a God or a Jesus of their own fabrication and imagination, right?

That's fueled and rooted in their own idealism of who they think God should be or who Jesus should be or their own speculation, right?

Because without truth, without revelation, we're only left to speculation.

And as you kind of press in, you discover that pretty quickly.

It's as if you met somebody out in public, right?

You're going through Whole Foods and you bump into somebody, you start talking.

All of a sudden, like, oh, do you know Justin?

Like, oh, I know, I know Justin.

Oh, you know Justin?

Yeah, and you mean the dude with the long flowing curly hair?

No, I don't think he used to have hair.

How long ago did you know Justin?

Well, I knew him in high school.

Okay, cool.

He had hair in high school.

And if you look at the pictures, you don't believe it.

It's not me.

But then you go, oh yeah, you know, you mean Justin, who the vegan who loves plants that taste like meat.

No, he that's not the same.

Oh, it must be the Justin who loves cats.

We're definitely not talking about the same person.

He he doesn't like cats.

He is not vegan, and he does not have hair.

So obviously you come to the fact where it's like, you're not talking about the same Justin.

But then they're committed.

Oh no, we're definitely talking about the same Justin.

We're just we're just kind of misconstrued on some few points, right?

And it's like, no, you you're you don't know the same one that I do.

We we do this with Jesus.

We a lot of people say, oh, I know Jesus.

Oh, I believe in Jesus.

And you're like, oh, the Jesus who X, the Jesus who Y, right?

No, not that Jesus.

I'm not sure about that one.

We maybe believe in the wrong Jesus.

We discover that they don't really know him because the one they are describing looks nothing like the one revealed in Scripture.

You see, Scripture is the authoritative self-revelation of who Jesus is.

If we want to know who Jesus is, we have to take him for his word, of how he has revealed himself to be in the Bible.

We don't get the freedom or the liberty to create a Jesus out of our own imagination or our own desires of what we wish he was like.

We are obligated to submit to Jesus as he has revealed himself to be.

And here in this text, we see the people of Jerusalem wrestle with who Jesus claims to be and their own speculation of who they think he is.

So let's dive into the text together to see this.

We see in the very beginning, 25 through 27, we see, is this the Christ?

Is this the Christ?

So where are we at in the narrative of John's gospel?

Uh Jesus had just left the city of Capernaum to come down to Jerusalem to be at the Feast of Booths.

And he came kind of under the radar at first, kind of privately, but quickly made himself public when he entered into the temple in Jerusalem and began teaching.

Now at the Feast of Booths, we have to imagine there are hundreds of thousands of Jews who are descending upon the city of Jerusalem and the temple to be able to participate in this festival.

So Jesus, armed with only the truth, enters into the temple, begins teaching in this scene.

And he had just called out the religious leaders who he claimed wanted to kill him, but they denied, right?

They were like, you must have a demon.

They ascribed to him lunacy for making such a statement that they would want to kill him.

He called out their hypocrisy.

He called out their double life that they were living.

And we see now the kind of finishing up of this temple teaching that's happening at the Feast of Booz.

And this is where we come in verse 25.

This, therefore, right?

Some of the people of Jerusalem, therefore, because he was teaching there, because he called out their hypocrisy, said, Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?

I think it's fascinating that the people in the temple, the Jewish uh audience uh makes the claim that, yeah, these people did want to kill it, right?

The same claim that Jesus made, but they said, You know, you must be a lunatic for thinking this.

The people are like, oh no, we we've heard these dudes say this.

They they definitely want to kill you.

And uh, but they're not.

Now, why aren't they killing him, right?

That's the question in the audience's mind.

And what they're wrestling with is maybe they know that he really is the Christ.

Maybe that's why they're not coming and ceasing him and putting him on trial that they might put him to death.

Maybe they know something that we don't.

Now, let's ask ourselves one thing.

What is the word Christ?

Is this the Christ, right?

Uh, Christ is not Jesus' last name, nor is it something you add to his name when you stub your toe.

Uh, Christ means something significant, right?

Uh, of who Jesus is in his relationship with Israel.

Uh so in the Hebrew word, this word would be Messiah.

In the Greek, it would be Christos.

Both of these words mean the anointed one.

And what it refers to is the act of Israel when they would install a king into his office, would have a horn full of oil that they would pour over that person, that man, uh, to signify that he is the anointed of God who rules and reigns in the office of king.

Right?

So when we talk about Christ, that's what we're talking about, the anointed king of God's people.

Now, where are they getting this from?

Why are they so infatuated with this Christ who was to come?

Well, there are two prophecies we see kind of in parallel with one another, one in 2 Samuel and one in 1 Chronicles.

We're gonna dive into the 1 Chronicles one.

But what we have is David, the king of Israel, wishing that he could build the temple of God uh in Jerusalem.

And Nathan is this prophet who's highly involved in King David's life.

And he declares to David, you're not gonna be the one who builds the temple.

It's gonna be your son who follows after you.

But here's God's promise or God's covenant to you is that there will come from you one whose ruling reign will never end, who will sit on the throne forever and ever.

And so Israel had experienced all of these uh trials and sufferings.

They have been held captive, they've been under the oppression of outside uh kingdoms and rulers, and so they were continually longing for something.

They were longing for this throne to be inhabited by the one of whom God promised would come, that they would experience this forever liberation, right?

This this forever reality of Israel being propped up among the nations as the chosen people of God.

That's what they were longing for.

So when they're asking the question, is this the Christ?

They're pointing to this prophecy, 1 Corinthians uh Chronicles, sorry, 17, 11 through 14.

It reads like this Nathan speaking to David.

When your days are fulfilled to walk with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, one of your sons, and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for me, and I will establish his throne forever.

I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son.

I will not take my steadfast love from him as I took it from him who was before you, but I will confirm him in my house and in my kingdom forever, and his throne shall be established forever.

So we see this two-part reality of this prophecy that Nathan gives to David.

One is that his son, Solomon, would be the one who would actually build the temple.

And so Solomon is that he fulfills that prophecy, right?

He builds the temple in Jerusalem.

But he speaks beyond Solomon, and he speaks to the Messiah, the Christ, who would come and establish his throne forever.

And so the people are wondering, is this him, right?

They were wondering if this Jesus might actually be the Christ.

Look at how the leaders aren't taking him by force, aren't trying to kill him in the way that we know that they desire to.

There almost seems to be some type of divine conspiracy theory here, right?

Maybe they know something we don't.

Maybe they're holding out information.

But but that quickly starts to dissolve and un uh uh uh uh kind of unwind itself because they start to try and go down the road of self-reasoning.

How might we know if he really is the Christ?

The Jewish people believed that he couldn't be because of his origin.

Their familiarity with who Jesus was and where he had come from under their own perception made them rule out or reason within themselves that he couldn't be the Christ.

It says uh here, but we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.

Verse 27.

So the Jewish people believed that when the Christ came, there would be this suddenness to his appearance among his people, right?

It would almost say as if he came out of nowhere and was then present among them.

And they're getting this out of the prophet Malachi.

In chapter 3 of Malachi, verse 1, it says this Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me.

And the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to his temple.

And the messenger of the covenant in whom you delight, behold, he is coming, says the Lord of hosts.

So that suddenly, that kind of they said in ver in verse 27, well, we know where Jesus comes from.

Malachi said that we really wouldn't know where he comes from, because it would be the suddenness to his appearance.

But yet the Jews did know some semblance of where the Messiah would come, because they have the prophet Micah say that he would be born, his origin would be in the city of Bethlehem, the city of David.

Micah 5, 2 says this.

But you, O Bethlehem, Ephra, who are too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler in Israel, whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient of days.

So we see that there's this kind of two-pronged reality to who the Messiah would be, how the people of Israel might know that he is the Messiah.

There would be the suddenness to his appearance, even though there would be knowledge of his origin.

And we even see in the Gospel of Matthew, as Herod is getting wind that a king is being born in Israel, he he seeks after the scribes.

Who are the scribes?

They're the people who take the oral tradition of the faith and they write it down and copy it, manuscript to meaning.

So they have intimate, intimate knowledge with the word of God.

Herod seeks out the scribes as he's getting word that there's going to be a king born in Israel.

And it says, hey, where does it say that this guy's gonna be born?

Because I would like to go visit him and worship him.

That's not really what Herod wanted to do.

He wanted to kill him, right?

And the scribes tell him that it's actually gonna be in Bethlehem of Judea, as it's written by the prophet.

We even see the people of Israel continue to wrestle with this.

As we go down into next week's text, John 7, 41 through 42, we see where the people of Jerusalem continue to wrestle with Jesus' origin, says this in 41 through 42.

Others said, This is the Christ, but some said, is the Christ to come from Galilee?

Has not the scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?

So we see them wrestling.

They know him as Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus the Galilean, Jesus who lives in Capernaum.

How could this be the Christ?

You see, their perceived familiarity.

Well, we know him and we know where he comes from.

And their self-reasoning led them to believe that Jesus could not have been the Christ that they were waiting for.

Is this the Christ?

Is this the anointed king of Israel we've been waiting for?

Their conclusion would resolve in disbelief.

But Jesus had actually fulfilled these prophecies that they were wrestling with.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, according to the census that was put upon Israel.

Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem, where he was born in a lowly manger.

His origin of earth was in Bethlehem.

And did he come suddenly into the temple?

Absolutely.

As the feast of Booths was happening, he came privately into the festival, but suddenly he came publicly into the temple and he was declaring the kingdom of God before them.

Their eyes were still blinded to be able to see, their ears were still deafened to be able to understand.

He is the Christ that they have been waiting for.

And that's their main issue.

He did not have to have earthly origins to affirm his kingly reign.

He had heavenly ones.

He had come from the Father, and he's going to reiterate that over and over again.

As we look at verses 28 through 31, we see, you don't know God.

You don't know God.

At the beginning of verse 28, it says, So Jesus proclaimed.

This means that he started to cry aloud.

We get this sense of his voice being raised in the temple to continue to teach to all those who are around him.

And maybe it was a kind of a heightened passion, right?

That started to stir within him, and he began to cry aloud these truths to the people.

Or maybe he was simply trying to get his voice over this resounding muttering as they were trying to self-reason.

Is this really the Christ?

Is this Jesus who he says that he is, right?

But nonetheless, his voice raises and he declares, You know me and you know where I come from.

I think there's a sense of irony in what Jesus is saying.

Because we see throughout the gospels where he declares, You don't know me, or you don't know where I've come from.

You don't understand who I really am.

I think that there's a sense of irony here as Jesus starts to tell them that really it's your familiarity with me that's causing you to not be able to understand and see that I really am the Christ who you are looking for.

They knew him in some sense.

They knew him as the earthly human Jesus who wandered around Israel, whose home was in Capernaum, who came from uh Joseph and Mary, who was raised as a Nazarene.

They knew him in some sense, but ultimately they failed to truly know him.

For if they did know him, then they would have known that he was the Christ, the Son of the Father.

He goes on to say, but I have not come of my own accord.

He who sent me is true, in him you do not know.

So Jesus is proclaiming something here that God is true.

What he's saying about that is that he's affirming what he's been teaching, that he has been sent by the Father, that he has come from heaven, and he's here to fulfill the Father's will and the mission that he has on this earth.

He's saying there's that the Father is true in his essence, and what I declare to you is true also.

But we cannot move too fast through this passage of Scripture because Jesus is saying something radical here, right?

Let's go back to the scene that we find him in.

He's in Jerusalem, he's in the temple, the only place that you can actually offer, according to the people of Israel, true worship to God through the sacrificial system, right?

He's in Jerusalem, he's in the temple, and he's potentially surrounded by hundreds of thousands of Jewish people who would declare what?

That Moses is their father, that they come from the patriarchs, that the prophets were theirs, that the law of God was given to them on Sinai, that they were the chosen people of God, that he delivered out of Egypt, that he brought into Canaan, that he gave over as their own possession, that he dwelt among them in the temple.

You're trying to say Jesus is standing in that space and he's declaring with a loud voice, you don't know God.

The audacity.

How can Jesus make such a claim?

John 14, 7a says this.

Jesus proclaims, if you had known me, you would have known my Father also.

You see, our God is one God in undivided unity, yet exists in Trinity, coexisting, co-eternal, of the same substance.

What Jesus is saying is you cannot divide him and the Father.

We can't compartmentalize God and Jesus.

There is no division among them.

There's this co-relationship of Father and Son that can never be separated.

And you cannot know one without knowing the other.

It is demanded upon us that to rightly know God, we must rightly know Jesus.

And this has huge implications for the world that we live in, because it demands that all people who declare that they know God, but they do not recognize Jesus as the Christ do not know God.

Judaism does not worship the same God that we worship.

Islam does not worship the same God that we worship.

Mormonism, Jehovah's Witness, Buddhist, you go down the line over and over again.

They do not worship the same God because they do not worship Jesus the Christ, the Son of God.

You cannot have one without the other.

Jesus makes this very clear.

This is actually the emphasis and thrust of the entire gospel of John, and we see him reiterate it over and over again.

The undivided unity of the Father and the Son.

John 5.23.

Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.

John 5, 42 through 43.

I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

I have come in my Father's name and you do not receive me.

John 6.45.

Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me.

John 8 19, you know neither me nor my father, because if you knew me, you would know my father also.

John 8.42.

If God were your father, you would love me.

He can't say it any clearer.

He couldn't reiterate it in any other phrasing, but to help us to see and understand that without knowing Jesus, we do not know God.

And Jesus stands in front of the people who would potentially have the most claim out of all of the nations to know God emphatically.

And emphatically he declares, you don't know him.

Because if you did, You know me.

Verse 30.

So they were seeking to arrest him.

I can imagine.

But no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come.

We see woven throughout the entire Gospel of John the sovereignty of God in the life and ministry of Jesus.

And we said this last week, right?

God wasn't uh uh keeping Jesus from harm, God was preserving Jesus for the cross.

Uh his harm, his destruction would come, but it would not come just haphazardly.

It would come for the rescue and redemption of his people through his atoning work on the cross.

Man's purpose cannot frustrate God's sovereign will.

Verse 31, yet many of the people believed in him.

They said, When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this has done?

So we see that the people, there might be some semblance of faith within the people.

Some people start to believe, John says.

Now he doesn't speak to the sincerity of their faith, but he does speak to the cause or purpose of their faith.

And it's because they've seen all these works and signs that he's done.

And we tend to kind of get a divided audience before us here in the narrative.

There's a people who say, this can't be the Christ because of their familiarity with him.

Well, we know who he is, we know where he's from, we know his parents, we know all of these things.

Our familiarity causes us to reason that he's not who he claims to be.

He's not the Christ.

But then there's others who say yes because of their amazement, right?

They've seen his works, they've heard his teaching, and there starts to come some sense of faith.

What John stresses for us here in this text is that the one who claimed to be God's people, the Jews, who have his law, who have heard his prophets, they don't really know him.

That's what John's stressing in the text.

They know a God of their own making, they know a God of their own fabrication, but they don't really know God because if they truly knew him, they would have truly believed in Jesus, whom he sent.

Verse 32 through 36.

You will seek, but you won't find.

You will seek, but you won't find.

What's these things?

There's a muttering that maybe this is the Christ.

Maybe this is who he says that he is.

And Jesus, in the midst of all this confusion and conversation, I think he reveals a warning, a caution to the people.

There's going to be a time when you come to seek me and you're not going to find me.

I'm going back to where I had come from.

He's talking about to be with his father.

He's talking about the ascension that would come after his resurrection, that he's going to go back home to heaven.

And he said, Where I'm going, you cannot come.

I think there's a couple things that we have to look at here.

First off, is the nature of you will seek me, but you will not find me.

A famous pastor I respect a lot, John MacArthur, he said, heaven is simply truth discovered too late.

Hell is simply truth discovered too late.

There's a reality where we have a finiteness of a time clock that's ticking against us that we might seek and discover and know Jesus truly.

And in knowing him and in putting our faith in him, we would have eternal life in his name.

That is a reality where we have a responsibility to seek after him to know him.

Every man has that obligation placed upon his soul to seek him and to find him.

But there's another part of this.

He says, Where I'm going, you cannot come.

I think what Jesus is trying to communicate is that we can't, by our own striving and strength, cross the threshold of heaven's gate.

We can't seek out heaven by our own works.

We can't make it there.

We can't build a ladder that would reach.

We cannot, if we if we think about right, uh the people, man, this isn't even in my notes.

Who are they called?

Babel.

Bam! Pastor Tim for the layup.

Babel, right?

What did they try to do?

They tried to build a pyramid, this construction to be able to reach heaven.

We can't in our own strength, in our own works, go to where Jesus is.

We can't reach heaven by our own merit.

Their time to seek after him is growing short.

After he leaves, they cannot come where he is.

Their pursuit of him would be ultimately fruitless.

The Jews continue to be confounded by the teaching of Jesus.

But here's what happened.

In Ezra and Nehemiah, we see that the Jews were released and freed up to be able to go back to Jerusalem to their home so that they could reconstruct the temple and the city wall that made up Jerusalem.

Many Jews, though, chose not to go back home.

They choose to stay in what is known as the dispersia, right?

In the surrounding nations, they chose to reside and remain.

And so they're saying here in the temple, is Jesus talking about going to the dispersion, those Jews who remained in exile and teaching them?

Is that what he's talking about?

Where he's going, we cannot come because of these unclean nations we would not dare find ourselves in.

They're trying to still reason and understand according to their own ability what in the world Jesus is talking about.

But their confusion and cluelessness only revealed that their eyes are still blind, their ears remain deaf.

They're unable to behold and believe Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus' time may not have yet come, but it surely was coming.

Though their attempts of understanding him, or even their attempts to arrest him, had failed, the Father's purposes wouldn't.

Their time was running short.

Jesus was going to return from where he had come.

These people would seek after him, but he would not be found.

Our main idea this morning is this: that the true Christ has truly come.

The true Christ has truly come.

You see, to believe this and to believe rightly about it is the entire aim of John's gospel.

And we've talked about this throughout this series, but it's worth mentioning over and over again.

Why is the evangelist sitting down and pinning these words?

It's for an aim that we might believe that he is the Christ, the Son of God.

John 20, 31 says, But these are written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

So John loves the people that he's writing for.

He wants them to have the eternal life that only Jesus can offer.

But it comes at believing that he truly is the Christ, and that the Christ has truly come.

That's what John's laboring for over and over again throughout this entire gospel.

Remember the mutterings of the people from last week?

John 7, 12, they said, and there was much muttering about him among the people, while some said he is a good man.

Others said no, he is leading the people astray.

If we look throughout our society, while there might be nuances to these broader generalizations, we can almost part society down the middle of these two claims.

Some would say that Jesus is a good man.

He was prosperous to the poor.

Look at the way that he was kind and gracious toward people, right?

He was a good man.

Others would say if they have any quasi-understanding of the claims that Jesus made, that he alone is the way, the truth, and the life, that no one can come to the Father but through him, that eternal life is only found in him.

They would all have animosity toward this person.

And the claims that he made is that no, he's actually leading people astray.

This isn't how we get to heaven.

This isn't how we have the life we're longing for.

You see, we're still stuck in the same place as they were when they're hearing Jesus teach right in front of them.

We cannot be believing in Jesus generically.

We must believe in the true Jesus.

The true Jesus is the Christ.

He is the anointed king of God's people.

The true Jesus is the Son of God, eternally begotten, coexisting, co-equal with the Father, the word that became flesh.

By believing in this truth, we may have life in his name.

You see, to believe that Jesus is anything less than the Christ, the eternal Son of God, is to trust in something other than the Christ of history, something other than the Christ of the apostles, the Christ of the early church, and ultimately the Christ of the Scriptures.

You aren't believing in Jesus, you're believing in your own weak God.

You may say you know him, but you don't.

Because if you knew him, your mouth would open up to declare that he is the Christ, the Son of God, and there is life in his name.

Believing in a generic Jesus, a self-created Jesus, it's gonna do us no good.

There's no eternal life found in the false gods of our own imagination.

There's only life in Jesus, Christ, the Son of God, the true Christ that has truly come.

He came to accomplish the mission of the Father, and he is truly coming again to fulfill his kingdom.

But see, many of us we still seem confused, just like the crowd in the temple.

We make these confident claims or assertions that, oh, we know Jesus, we know this man, but but they're all often so rooted in our own speculation and idealism of who we actually want Jesus to be, not who he reveals himself to be.

And we wonder why there seems to be so much confusion around the person and work of Jesus and the eternal life that he gives to his people.

You see, many of us we we seek the wrong Jesus.

We seek the wrong Jesus.

Here's the reality of our state.

We want to live forever.

We want this eternal life.

Right?

Death is so foreign to us.

And what's on the other side of death is often so crippling and fearful to us.

And we want to live forever, but we want to live forever by our own means.

And by what we determine is going to accomplish that for us.

And so what do we do?

We fabricate a Jesus who's going to accomplish what we desire for us.

That's what we want.

We don't really want Jesus.

We want what Jesus could potentially give us.

And we're not really willing to submit ourselves to the true Jesus.

We instead will fabricate a Jesus after our own imagination that accomplishes the alleviation of our deep fear.

And so what do we do?

We make the claim that we know Jesus, but yet we don't really know him.

He's just what we think he should be like.

He should be this guy who's super loving and inclusive and nice and kind, and he would never do anything bad to anybody, and he served the poor and all these.

And there's so much, so much substance of truth in those claims, but they fail ultimately to reveal to us the true Jesus, the Christ, the Son of God.

And this happens in the church too.

We're seeing it happen too frequent and too often within the church.

Because here's what happens: society wants the authority to dictate who God is and who Jesus is.

Ultimately, we all wrestle with that sin in our own heart.

We want to tell God who he has to be.

We want to tell Jesus who he has to be.

And that societal pressure mounts against the church.

And what you'll see is as the culture becomes more vehement, as it becomes more aggressive toward the church, you're going to see church after church after church change their beliefs.

The things that they used to believe, they're going to change and they no longer believe them.

All in the name of love, all in the name of trying to be more like who Jesus really is.

But here's what's going to happen that follows that.

They're going to take the scripture and they're going to twist it and they're going to manipulate it to bend to their understanding, their message, their new discovered truth.

And what's the fruit?

What's the outcome of that?

Ultimately, it's a Jesus after their own making.

You see, the work of progressive ideology is to remake who Jesus is fundamentally.

Because if they can remake who Jesus is fundamentally, they can have a God of their own creation that demands nothing of their life, but gives them everything they ever wanted.

The relief of their fear.

That's the way of the world.

That's the way of the human heart.

God calls us to submit to his word because his word is the authoritative self-revelation of who he is.

He demands something of us.

It costs us something to believe in the true Jesus, but we gain everything from it.

Who is your Jesus?

It does us no good to say that we believe in Jesus unless we believe that He is the Christ and that He is the Son of God.

It's only after believing in this Jesus, Jesus the Christ, that we may have life in his name.

Others of us, though, we we seek our own way into heaven.

We seek our own way into heaven.

Remember what Jesus said to the people in the temple.

Where I'm going, you cannot come.

You see, another part of the human heart is that we believe that we can climb our way or work our way to cross the threshold of heaven's gates.

That's religion.

This is our kind of default disposition to our relationship with God, that we can cross the threshold of heaven's gate by our own striving and working.

We had an awesome conversation in our mission group this week where we talked about how most of us grow up in a uh kind of worldview or in a Christian context, a church context that teaches us that ultimately Jesus is just our great example.

And if you can live a life like Jesus lived his life, then you can have eternal life because he will bless you, he will show his love toward you, and he will bring you into heaven, your home.

And we said, man, to live a life like Jesus, that's awesome.

That's something we should desire to do.

But ultimately, it is emphatically insufficient.

You are horrible at living like Jesus lived.

I am too, right?

When I say you, that's an that's a y'all with me.

You are not good at it.

Be honest, right?

We are not good at living like Jesus lived.

When you and I lay our head down at night and we start to recount and replay all the different ways we failed and we didn't live a life like Jesus, what hopelessness is there in that?

What despair resides in that?

You and I can't live like Jesus lived.

He is not just our great example.

If he was solely our great example of how we should live our life, we would have no hope.

Because you and I failed miserably at doing that.

The good news of the gospel is not that Jesus gave us an example we are to live our life after.

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus is the victory of a failed life trying to live like him.

That he conquers us and he gives us the victory that he accomplished in his perfect obedience, in his fulfillment of the demands and law of the Father.

It is through him that we have victory in spite of all of our failings.

And so should we live a life that's like Jesus?

Absolutely.

But we don't live that life so that we might gain heaven as our home.

We live that life because Christ has picked us up out of the muck and mire of our own sin and carried us across the threshold into our home.

It is in Christ that we are seated in heavenly places at the right hand of the Father, where he sits also.

We didn't climb our way to that seat.

Jesus the Christ is sitting on the throne that will last forever, that will endure through eternity, and he places us there with him by grace.

And so out of joy, out of being safe in the refuge of my eternal home in Christ, I live a life that looks like him.

Because I want to be like my big brother.

I want to be like him.

Not because I'm trying to earn his affection.

You see, we don't come into our home by our own merit.

We come into our home by Jesus' merit.

What Jesus is revealing to us in this text in John 7 is this.

In our own seeking, we don't find him.

In our own strivings, we fail to reach heaven.

Left to ourselves, left to our own seeking and striving, we will never discover the true Jesus, nor will we ever obtain our true heavenly home.

We will resolve to worship a God of our own imagination that cannot give us the life our soul longs for.

Jesus is sent by the Father to seek after us.

Jesus is sent by the Father to seek after us.

You see, this is what heaven understood.

This is what heaven knew.

That in our own seeking of him to discover him, we would not find him.

In our own seeking to obtain our heavenly home, we would never become.

And so what does heaven do?

Heaven sends Jesus to seek after us.

Luke 19, 10, Jesus says, For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

If you're in Christ this morning, why are you here?

You're not here because your seeking led you down this road of enlightenment that you discovered the true Jesus.

You're not here because your seeking caused you to cross the threshold of heaven's gate into your true home.

You're here because Jesus left heaven to seek after you.

And he captured you.

He conquered you.

And he carried you home to where you rightly belong.

See, this is the hope that we have.

In all of our seeking, we were found helpless to ever truly find him.

We did not climb nor did we even stumble our way into the refuge of heaven.

Jesus came and he carried us there.

He sought us.

He saved us.

Praise God.

My hope for us, sacred mission, is that we would know the true Jesus and be with him in our true home.

In Jesus, we're given a new home.

This world is not our home.

We're sojourners, we're aliens in a foreign land here.

We're waiting for a home to come.

In fact, in group, we were talking about the Feast of Booths.

And there's this beautiful, I think, parallel to the church gathered.

You see, what was the Feast of Booths supposed to do?

It's supposed to, as they were journeying through the wilderness, they would congregate in these makeshift tents, these homes, and they would be identified as God's people, even in the midst of the wilderness.

I believe the church gathered as even a representation of that.

As we're on this wilderness pilgrimage, every week we come into this makeshift tent, and we're identified one with another, citizens of a different kingdom, of a different land that our hearts long to be at home in.

And we get the joy of reminding one another of that promise, of encouraging and building up one another and that gospel truth and edifying and strengthening one another's faith.

Keep in the fight, stay in the race.

Heaven is before us.

And we get there through knowing, submitting to, and worshiping the true Jesus who sits on the throne forever in the middle of heaven, shining his radiant light, being the God of his people.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.