John: Belief and Acceptance

All right, so uh tell a story and then lead into our passage in John 12.

Uh I've been kind of floating around the story in the last few sermons, it seems like.

The the Hebrews in the book of Exodus, second book of the Bible, um, the Hebrews are enslaved in Egypt, and they'd been there for generations, been there for six generations actually.

When they went there, there's about 70 people with Jacob.

Six generations later, they're thinking maybe there's about two million people enslaved.

They've been crying out.

They've been crying out to God, God save us, God deliver us, take us back to our land, Canaan, where we're not enslaved and just making bricks every day for the Egyptians.

Would you please deliver us?

God's been quiet.

Haven't been doing anything.

All of us can kind of testify, raise our hands.

I know that feeling where I've been crying out for generations, it feels like, and not getting something.

Um God's been quiet.

Finally, God in his sovereignty and his timing, uh, he decides to move on behalf of his people.

And so he raises up Moses, he raises up Aaron, and he says, I go talk to Pharaoh, go talk to the Egyptian leaders, and tell them to let my people go.

Right?

Some of us grew up in church, we know the song.

So they go to Pharaoh and they say, Let my people go.

And Pharaoh says, I don't think I'm gonna do that.

I'm actually really enjoying the workforce.

Economically, this is actually really good for us.

I'm not letting you guys go.

And so Moses and Aaron leave and say, okay, let's see what happens here.

And so what happens here is a bunch of plagues come on the Egyptian people.

And so uh the Egyptians, they created gods of their own, um, little gods, um, same way we do.

Uh, with anything that gives life, they would deify it.

So first plague, God turns the Nile River into blood.

They worship the Nile River.

The river gave them life, gave them fish to eat, water to drink, therefore, we will worship the Nile River.

It gives us life.

We'll worship you.

We will sacrifice to you, we will give time, energy, thought.

Um, we will esteem you very high, and we will look to you for life.

And so God says, All right, if you're going to do that with the Nile River, let me show you how powerful the Nile River is.

I'll just turn it to blood, all the fish die, you don't have water to drink.

All right, so then uh the next plague is uh frogs.

You think that's kind of strange?

Well, there's these two goddesses, uh Hegat and Isis, and they were fertility goddesses.

And, you know, birthing children, very important.

Uh and they they that gives them life, so let's let's form a god out of fertility, and then the frog was a symbol of fertility, therefore they worshiped frogs, and so God says, let's see how powerful the frog is, and so all the frogs begin to die, and there's literally just dead frogs everywhere.

They had a God of the earth, and so God says, All right, you have a God of the earth, you know, okay, so the earth gives you life, you know, vegetables.

Um, let's see how powerful your God of the earth is.

And so uh gnats literally come up from the dust of the earth, and there's just gnats everywhere.

And over and over again, God is saying, don't look to that.

Don't create your own God, don't look to that.

There's no there's no hope there.

After the gnats, there's flies.

I know you didn't come to church to learn learn about dung, but dung was very important in this culture.

A lot of livestock, big livestock culture, and the processing of the dung was important because without the processing of the dung, there'd be flies everywhere.

So the dung beetle was very important to the Egyptian people.

And so they worship the dung beetle.

The dung beetle gave them a good life.

Because it helped process the dung so that flies didn't breed in the dung.

And God says, Let's see how great your little god of the dung beetle is.

It sounds so crazy, right?

I mean, oh, we would never do anything like this.

Well, let's see where the sermon goes.

Um, so uh God brings the plague of the flies and says, How great is this God of yours?

Can't even protect you from flies, and flies are everywhere, and it's it's nasty and it's horrible.

Over and over again, God's saying that created little God is nothing to look to.

Don't put your hope in something false.

Here's what he's saying: don't put your hope in a frog.

I mean, literally, just don't put your hope in a frog.

Don't deify a frog.

Fifth plague comes, livestock.

Livestock was so important to them.

Their clothing, their food, I mean, their transportation, and all the livestock starts to die.

They had all these magicians, they esteemed magicians.

So he got the sixth plague, all the Egyptians get boils.

See how powerful they are?

It can't get rid of their own boils.

Seventh and eighth plague, hail and locusts get brought in by wind.

Nasty, horrible, destroys all the crops.

Again, God that saying that that little God is nothing to look to.

Don't look to that little God.

Don't put your hope in a frog.

And then their great God was the God of Reed, the God of the sun.

And God brings in a plague of darkness for three days, and it's just dark.

And then we get this passage in Exodus 10, verses 27 and 29.

Exodus 10:27

It's not your bolt and I'll just read it.

And it says this.

Moses and Aaron go back, hey, what's going on?

Got all these plagues, you let people go?

Are you convinced yet there's a God greater than your little gods?

Are you convinced yet?

And this is what it says in Exodus 10, 27.

But the Lord hardened, the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go.

And Pharaoh said to Moses, Get out of my sight, make sure you do not appear before me again.

The day you see my face, you will die, just as you say.

Moses replied, I will never appear before you again.

So this is where we jump from that story.

You can finish that story in Exodus 10 if you'd like to later on.

We jump to John 12, and our passage is in your bulletin, and we're gonna see frogs come back up again.

Don't worry, we're not done with the frogs.

Uh so John 12, 37, and I'm gonna read the whole passage for this morning and we're gonna work our way through it.

37 through 43.

Even after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.

People, uh a lot of Pharisees, people in the Jewish faith, I mean, Jesus performing miracles.

They look, okay, kind of like God was doing with with uh Pharaoh.

Like, look, look, I mean, look what I'm doing.

You still don't believe?

Even if Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.

This was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet.

Lord, who has believed our message and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?

For this reason they could not believe.

Because as Isaiah says elsewhere, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts, so they can neither see with their eyes, nor understand with their hearts, nor turn, and I would heal them.

But it's in the scriptures, right?

This is the kind of passage you read and you go, What is that?

Like, what?

How does this fit in?

Well, we're gonna talk about it.

Isaiah said this because he saw Jesus' glory and spoke about him.

Yet at the same time, many, even among the leaders, believed in him.

So people were some people were believing, some of these Pharisees were believing.

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 the praise from God.

So if the first question coming out of that verse 40, he has blinded their eyes and hardened their hearts.

Verse 40, and even thinking back to that Exodus 10, that God hardened Pharaoh's heart.

I mean, this is one of the great theological debates.

Huge.

I don't think we're going to reconcile it this morning.

So we can just kind of let that expectation down.

But we can get some commentary about it a little bit.

It just doesn't sound fair.

Right?

It just doesn't sound fair that because we go, well, what if the possibility that that person would want to believe and that God would harden their hearts?

Well, first off, fairness is not a kingdom value.

Fairness is not a kingdom value.

And in our post-Enlightenment Western individualistic, consumeristic mindset, we have a hard time with this idea that this isn't our world, and it's not.

This is not your world, it's not my world.

This is God's world.

Okay?

He made the rules, it's his.

That's so hard to remove ourselves from the center of the world and how everything should operate, to that God is the center of the world and he determines how it can operate.

That is so difficult to us.

And yet it's so freeing.

If you can do it.

To relieve yourself from being the center of the world is unbelievably freeing.

It's his world.

God let Pharaoh have his own way.

See, unless God softens a heart, the heart will continue to be hardened.

So Pharaoh kept hardening his heart, and God says, okay.

Romans 9?

Read that one if you want a little tension in your life and in your beliefs.

I mean, so God reserves the right to harden an individual's heart.

It's very clear.

That's such a tension in me because part of me is going to get, okay, what about like anyone who comes, all who call?

I mean, this is great theological debate.

And I used to get into it, and I used to kind of get a good handle on a lot of the arguments, and maybe some of you have a good handle on it.

You feel pretty good about it, and at times I do, and at times I go, well, what about you?

Here's the conclusion I've come to.

Um, being that God is omniscient and omnipotent and omnipresent, perhaps there are some things and the ways he operates that I'm not able to fully understand, and I'm gonna be comfortable, I'm gonna be comfortable under that.

I'm not saying you've got to embrace this way of approaching this subject matter, but I'm just saying that that's where I've landed.

Uh I'm gonna believe this fully.

It's in the scriptures.

I'm gonna believe Romans 9 fully, I'm gonna believe this Exodus 10 fully, I'm gonna believe John 12 fully.

I'm gonna believe it, and at the same time, there's gonna be this humility of maybe I can't put all the pieces together perfectly right now.

That it's his world.

He is love, he is love, but it's his world.

What's clear in this passage is John is watching this unfold.

He's watching Jesus do all these miracles, and then he's seeing people not believe.

I mean, people who saw the miracle not believe, and John's going, how do I reconcile that?

And his reconciliation is God must be hardening their heart in some way for some purpose.

And he thinks back to Isaiah and he says, Well, this was true in Isaiah, and he's probably thinking about the Exodus story.

He's going, yeah, okay, this is this somehow is playing out.

All right, so here's what here's what I want to talk about.

I want to, we kind of commented on that.

I want to spend the whole time in that.

I want to ask two questions.

Pretty basic about belief.

Where does belief come from?

And then number two, what does belief do?

So, number one, where does it come from?

We've talked about this before.

John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

No one, is Jesus talking, no one can come to me.

To come to me means believe in me.

Nobody can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.

In the same passage, Jesus declares, all that the Father gives to me will come to me.

See, I can here's some great relief for you.

Your belief was not begun by your own mustering up enough strength to believe.

Therefore, your belief in the future is not going to be dependent upon you mustering enough strength to believe.

That is that is so that is so freeing.

That God is the one who gives us belief.

I've walked the aisle, I've I have I've signed cards, I've nailed things to crosses.

Anybody nailed something to a cross?

I've nailed stuff to a cross.

I'm not saying we maybe we'll nail something to a cross.

I don't know.

Um I've nailed things to a cross, I've laid things down at a cross, I've signed things, I've walked aisles, I've prayed at altars, I've done all of those things.

All of those things was not me uh creating belief.

All of those things is a reaction to belief that's already there, that's shown up.

I've told the story before about the Halloween where I where I was scared into the kingdom of God.

I mean, it was the reenactment of the rapture, and there's guys with machine guns and like um chainsaws, and people are bloody, and I'm going, yeah, at the end of that, yep, I'll take Jesus over that.

Sign me up, sign me up, I'm in.

And I was in, I was a white tent in the field, and I raised my hand.

Um, but what I can remember is, is I can remember two years before that, I was in the sixth grade.

Somebody gave me an NIV student Bible.

It was the first time I had a Bible, and it had these little sections in it that I could read and help me understand the Bible.

It was the first time, and I would read it, and I would read the scripture, and then I'd read that little section.

And I can remember being in sixth grade, sitting down at the little desk my dad made for me out of a laminate kitchen countertop.

It was horrible.

Um the chair was nice, and remember the chair.

So I and I would sit down with a highlighter and a pen, sixth grade, and I would sit down and I would I would read the New Testament.

Where's that coming from?

I mean, I all I cared about at that point was Michael Jordan, Isaiah Thomas, and uh Larry Byrd.

I mean, what what am I doing at a desk opening an NIV Bible with a highlighter and a pen?

That was God birthing belief in me.

It wasn't until two years later that I commit what I understand of becoming a Christian at the time.

I was committing, I'll raise my hand.

Here's what I'm saying: regen, let's make it theological.

Regeneration, a new heart being birthed in you, belief.

It precedes commitment.

It precedes what what we typically understand of becoming a Christian.

You've already been regenerated.

And see, this is wonderfully freeing.

Because what this means is it's not dependent upon your walk down the aisle.

Because it is, and you gotta keep walking down the aisle to keep it up.

What it's dependent upon is God's grace to you, to birth belief in you, that He is sufficient for you.

It's not a sort of rescue, it is a full rescue of your shame and your guilt and your unbelief.

So, where does belief come from?

It comes from God.

No one can come to me, no one can believe in me unless it's granted to him by the Father.

And while this creates great tension in you, when we think about other people, at the same time it's unbelievably freeing to you personally.

And I'm not saying we're gonna be able to reconcile those two feelings, but I'm saying they exist.

See, I thought I thought I had to maintain the perfect amount of belief in order to stay in the kingdom.

It's been years for me to be able to go, I am secure enough in what Christ did for me to be able to start to look at where there's some frogs in my life, where I've deified some some things, and I'm I'm not believing in God in some ways in my life.

Here's what I'm talking about.

Let's jump to 42.

Yet at the same time, so there's some people who weren't believing, yet at the same time, uh many, even among the leaders, believed in him.

So you got some some Jewish leaders and some people who weren't leaders, but they're they're Jewish people and in the synagogue.

And so if you're in the synagogue, there's a cultural thing, it's an economic thing.

I mean, it's a social, there's a family thing.

Everything's riding on you being in the synagogue.

But because of the Pharisees, they, these people believing, 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.

It's so easy at the end of this and go, oh, there's these people, they're weak.

Oh, they're weak believers.

Do you know how hard that would be?

I mean, do you can you imagine?

Walking away from family culturally, socially, economically?

I mean, I think all of us would agree, hope I could do it.

Really hope I could do it.

But let's not pretend that it would be easy.

I mean, this would be very difficult for these people.

And I don't know, you know, were they saved?

Were they not saved?

Are they king?

Did they like sort of believe?

Did they taste, but you know, Hebrews, they taste, but they weren't in.

I I don't know.

I mean, fortunately, um, I'm relieved of being the judge of the souls of humanity.

Um, that's a good position.

I don't want to be in that position.

I'm relieved of that.

I don't have to make judgment on them.

Um what I do know, what's clear in the passage, is on some level there was belief.

And on some level, they weren't trusting in that belief for some application into their life.

And in that unbelief, that's where we get an idol.

See, in the unbelief, that's where we get a frog.

So last week we we mentioned idols, and I said this, I defined it this way.

Idols are good or bad things that we overly devote ourselves to, and in doing so, they begin to have functional power over us.

See, what they thought would bring life to them actually begins to control them.

That's how idol works.

So you have this God of fertility.

Let's just take this one because I'm enjoying talking about frogs.

You have this God of fertility, and then let's deify the frogs, and the frogs are sacred.

So now we'll readjust our entire lives for the sake of the frog.

And then if we're having a hard time getting pregnant, we're going to ultra focus on the God or goddess of fertility, and we're going to devote ourselves, and maybe we make sacrifices, but it's time and energy and joy and freedom for the sake of the frog.

And this is how idols work.

There's always a sacrifice to a God, to an idol.

So here in John 12, what we get, this phrase at the end of 43, that the idol's acceptance.

They wanted praise from other people more than praise from God.

The idols' acceptance.

Right?

Like life will finally be great.

You know, life will continue to be good if I have their acceptance.

If I lose it, the house is going to crumble.

So I think there's some general sort of like idolatry of acceptance.

Maybe that maybe all of us exist.

Maybe you're here, you go, well, I don't struggle with idol of acceptance.

Like, and you're going, you know, I just I sort of want to be accepted as somebody who doesn't care about acceptance.

Yeah, right.

Like you don't, all right.

So that's that's just another form of wanting to be accepted.

You just want to be you want to be accepted as somebody who doesn't care about acceptance.

All right, so let's we're all in the same group here.

We all in some way struggle with this idolatry of acceptance.

Is there some general ways that we do this in terms of like a general filter by which we see the world and we we measure our own decisions and what we do?

You know, like what I look like and what I wear and how I'm gonna do the decisions we make, the decisions of family, what I want to do with my life.

And if you're and if you're looking at all those decisions with the filter of how will others perceive me?

How will everybody else will they accept me with this or will they not accept me with this?

What you've done, you've deified, you've made frogs, you've deified frogs.

That's what we do when we do this.

It's easy to do, right?

Like you turn something like good health.

I think all of us would agree.

Good health would be great.

But when good health becomes tied to idolatry of acceptance, and then you you you brutalize your body for the sake of other people viewing you and accepting you a certain way.

We can do it with work, we can do it with cars and clothes, and we can do it with faith, we do it with our children.

We can do it with whether we're in a relationship or out of a relationship.

And it just can get a lot more specific, right?

The idolatry of acceptance, like if I finally get my if I finally get my dad's acceptance, if my husband would finally come home and say, wow, you've done fantastic today.

Like if I just get that acceptance and everything's gonna be okay.

Don't look to other people to be your God.

They're gonna let you down.

They're not God.

See, they have their own ideal idolatry going on, and they're looking for their own people to say something to them, and then you're looking to them to say something to you, and you can just see how the cycle breaks down, it doesn't work.

It sucks life out of you.

There's this weird idolatry in me.

I was trying to think about it this week and thinking about this verses 42 and 43 and just sort of digging into my own heart and mind.

Like, where is this in me?

There's this really weird idolatry in me.

When I think about uh when I think about my hometown where I'm from, this is so this is bizarre.

Uh I don't even care to go to a reunion, okay?

But I want all of them to think I've really made it in life.

Like, what is that?

It's some weird idolatry going on.

Like, if all those people, of which on some degree I don't even care about anymore, because I don't even want to go to the reunion, but I want all of them to think, oh, he's you know, he's really, man.

He's really that guy.

He really made it happen.

Do any of y'all know what I'm talking about?

I mean, we we were watching uh Jimmy Fallon this week.

That's part of my devotional life is Jimmy Fallon in the evenings.

And we're watching Jimmy Fallon this week, and he has Emma Stone come on.

Okay, so Emma Stone's an actress, and so they sit down, they're talking, and they had nicknames for each other.

They had nicknames for each other, and and apparently very apparently Jimmy Fallon's friends with every uh famous person in the country.

I'm picking up on this as I watch every night.

Uh they have nicknames for each other, and I just sort of Chris says, How is he friends with all these people?

Like, how does he have time to be friends with this many people?

And and it does it doesn't seem to be real surface.

They have nicknames for each other.

So there's some actual relationship here.

And she says, Well, you she said, Chris says, Well, you know, we have friends, and these are just his friends.

And I found myself sitting there thinking, boy, wouldn't, I mean, I love my friends, but man, wouldn't it be great to be friends with those people?

Like, I was literally thinking this.

And I don't get into celebrity worship, but I I was thinking, whoa, that would be that would be really something.

I mean, life would really take off.

All right, maybe you don't do it with Emma Stone and Jimmy Fallon, but we do it, right?

It's the idolatry of acceptance.

I was finding myself thinking this.

I'm like, they could be horrible people.

I don't even know who they are.

Maybe they'd be jerks.

I don't know, they'd be horrible friends.

But then the idolatry of acceptance, you're thinking, boy, if I could just have that acceptance, life would change.

Life would be so much better.

You know what it is?

It's a frog.

It's deifying a frog.

It's crazy.

And we have to die to the idol of acceptance.

To become alive to the truth, you're already accepted.

And I know it sounds, it's gonna sound it sounds very kind of cliche, like Christian cliche, to say you're already accepted by the creator of the world.

You don't need Jimmy Fallon's acceptance.

But it's true.

That girl, that guy, that boss, that dad, that mom.

You're all you are in Christ.

You are accepted by the creator of the world who fully, fully loves you perfectly.

You're already accepted.

There's this story in Mark chapter 9, and a dad has a son who's sick.

Mark 9 · chapter mention

He's having seizures, and the dad says, you know, he's he has a he has a spirit in him, he has a demon in him, he's causing all these seizures and throwing them into the fire, throwing them into the water, and the dad brings the son to Jesus, would you would you please do something here?

I mean, can you imagine how hard we've had friends who have had children have seizures, such a feeling of helplessness?

And he brings the dad, he brings the son to Jesus.

Would you please heal him?

In verse 23 of Mark 9, Jesus says, if you believe, anything is possible if you believe.

And then the man says in verse 24, I do believe, will you help my unbelief?

Isn't that fascinating?

I do believe, will you help my unbelief?

At the same time that I believe, I also recognize I have some unbelief in me.

Then I love the honesty.

I'm not going to pretend, even in front of Jesus, I'm not going to pretend to sort of dress myself up.

I believe perfectly, 100%, I'll have any questions.

I never doubt.

I never create and deify frogs.

I am all in perfectly.

This guy says, I do believe, yet I need help with my unbelief.

It is this idea like I'm not as faithful as I want to.

I have doubts.

I can't muster up all the strength to reach the perfect moral standard you set before me.

I'm unsure I even have all the right Christian beliefs in my life.

There's some tensions occurring in me.

I have unbelief.

I'm deifying some frogs.

I have some stuff going on.

I need you to help me with my belief.

I mean, you're like this man, whether you realize it or not.

Even if you're a believer in Christ, you're not a perfect believer.

You don't believe perfectly.

I believe, yet, will you help me with some of this unbelief?

And where we don't believe, frogs rise up.

Idolatry rises up.

The passage this morning just shows us the idolatry of acceptance.

These little gods we look to, they always require a sacrifice.

They require time, they require thought, they require dignity, they require our joy, they require our freedom.

And we should exercise our belief.

We should try to grow our belief.

We should be in the Word.

And at the end of all that, and in all of that, is us crying out to God, help my unbelief.

I need your help to create belief in me.

I know you want acceptance from somebody on some level, some group of people, some person.

I do too.

Just don't worship a frog that's going to suck life from you.

So when we're unbelieving, we're wanting that acceptance so badly, it's driving decisions in an unhealthy way.

We remember, we have to remember, we're already accepted.

And our way into acceptance by God is not Him asking us to sacrifice something to Him, it was Him sacrificing Himself for us.

That is why a life devoted to Jesus and resting in Jesus gives life.

It does not diminish it.

Let's pray together.

God, we do confess.

We want acceptance in serious ways from people that mean so much to us.

To hear our father say some words of acceptance would be unbelievable for some of us.

To have our mother speak acceptance to us could be unbelievable to us.

And then in some ways it's just silly, the way we kind of create, oh, if that group of people or that person or that girl or and all of this help it not to be the filter by which we see things when we make our decisions.

God, would we not deify acceptance?

But would we live in the acceptance we have in you?

God, there's there's places in our hearts we don't trust in you, and in that place there's unbelief.

And for some of us there's idolatry of acceptance, and for some of us there's other idolatries, but what we know is it doesn't give life.

Would you help us to trust in you more?

To trust you more?

To cry out to you, to cry out to you, I do believe.

Will you help our unbelief?

I pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.