Seeing Starts with Surrender (John 7:14-36) Myles Holmes | June 15, 2025

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God through the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the Spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Morning, church.

So good to worship together this morning.

You can take your Bibles, open them up to John chapter 7.

John 7 · chapter mention

If you don't have a copy of God's Word, you're going to need one this morning.

So our ushers are making their way to the front.

You can flag one down.

They'd love to get a copy into your hands.

You can keep this as our gift to you because we believe these aren't just words about God.

These are the very words of God.

As you turn there this morning, I want to ask you if you've ever experienced this season in life that can only be described as spiritually blurry.

A season where you're surrounded by all the right things.

You're coming to church, but it's not moving you.

You're reading the word, but the words aren't really landing.

They're just words on paper.

You're serving, you're even maybe showing up to small group, but in these things there's no life.

You're in the presence of all the right things, but the feelings just aren't there.

I'm sure as I describe that, if you've been following Christ for any length of time, you've been there.

And it is a deeply disorienting place to be.

And if we're honest, all of us have experienced it.

We want to see Jesus clearly.

We're doing the things to see Jesus clearly, but the harder we try to see him, the farther he feels away from us.

Now there are seasons in life where that's just the nature of our walk.

There are seasons in life where no matter what you do, the harder you press in, it just feels like God is still far.

But at other times, and this is what Jesus wants to press into us this morning, the distance isn't so much about God hiding from us.

At other times, there's there's something in us that's actually blocking the light.

And our life is much like asking why the light isn't shining through the windows in our rooms when we actually have the blinds closed.

The light is there, but there is something within us that's that's making us feel far.

The posture of our heart is keeping it out.

Now, here in John 7, Jesus is standing in front of a crowd, he is teaching, he is speaking the truth, and he is offering this crowd life.

No one has ever been nearer to a clearer picture of the words of life than these people as they heard the teaching of Jesus Himself, and yet as they stand there in the very presence of the Word of God Himself, they are blind.

They're confused, they're divided.

And in verse 17 of John 7, we'll read the whole thing in a moment, Jesus really puts his finger on a diagnosis.

Look what he says.

He says, if anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God.

In other words, and this is the main thing I want you to draw from our message today: God reveals more of himself to hearts that are ready to obey.

God reveals more of himself to hearts that are surrendered to him.

Surrender, the willingness in our lives to obey God, is the act in the Christian life that opens up the blinds, that allows the light of the glory of Jesus Christ to shine into the window of our lives so that we can see him clearly.

In light of this, you and I this morning, we have a profound promise, we have a profound blessing in front of us, and that is that Jesus this morning is ready to be seen.

He is speaking to those who have positioned their hearts in a place of surrender, who are saying, I don't know yet, Lord, what you're about to say this morning.

I don't know what your word has in store for me, but here I am, surrendered to your will, no matter the cost.

A posture isn't complicated, it's a posture of surrender.

And this morning we want to see him together.

So would you stand with me this morning with hearts surrendered?

Let's read his word together.

We stand this morning, because this isn't just a writing, this isn't just an ancient writing, this is the word of God speaking relevantly into our lives.

Let's read it together.

Beginning in verse 14.

About the middle of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching.

Jews therefore marveled, saying, How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?

So Jesus answered them, My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.

If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

Has not Moses given you the law?

Yet none of you keeps the law.

Why do you seek to kill me?

The crowd answered, You have a demon.

Who is seeking to kill you?

Jesus answered them, I did one work, and you all marvel at it.

Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers, and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me, because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well?

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

Some of the people of Jerusalem therefore said, Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?

And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him.

Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?

But we know where this man comes from.

And when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.

So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, You know me and you know where I come from, but I have not come of my own accord.

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

I know him, for I have come from him, and he sent me.

So they were seeking to arrest him.

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

Yet many of the people believed in him.

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

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.

Jesus then said, I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.

You will seek me and you will not find me.

Where I am, you cannot come.

The Jews said to one another, Where does this man intend to go that he will not that we will not find him?

Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?

What does he mean by saying, You will seek me and you will not find me, and where I am, you cannot come?

Let's turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we are here this morning, declaring in our hearts of hearts together that we are here to seek your son.

That we long to see him.

That as he as his voice echoes through the pages of Scripture, we long to have hearts that are ready to obey and surrender to him.

And so, God, we pray this morning that give us strength, give us focus, help us to hear you.

God, these things are supernatural.

We're so dependent on you, and so do this work in us.

We pray.

Thank you for speaking that to us.

And pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Amen.

You can grab your seat.

This moment in Jesus' ministry is filled with attention.

Jesus is speaking openly, everyone is confused.

Now we can bring clarity to this conversation.

It certainly would not be true to say that the confusion begins with the speaker.

This is Jesus Christ speaking.

And so in a conversation with Jesus, you can be sure that the Lord of Lords is speaking with absolute clarity.

And the people are also listening.

But as they are listening to Jesus' words, nobody's landing on the same page.

Some people look at this man and they certainly think he's the Messiah.

And we find that by the end of the passage, there are some who believe.

Others think that Jesus is crazy, and there are a few who want to kill him.

The conversation is happening, words are being spoken, people are listening, but it is mass chaos.

You and I have experienced this before.

Have you ever tried to decide where to go for lunch after a church service with a group of people?

It is impossible.

Some people are shouting, others are murmuring, some people are so hangry, other people want to be killed.

Here's Jesus right in the middle of it.

In the middle of this tension, giving us the key to understanding, showing us why sometimes Jesus feels so far, even when we are in his presence.

Look what he says in verse 17.

If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know.

Problem isn't clarity.

The problem here, Jesus puts his finger on the heart of the problem, and it's this it's surrender.

God reveals more of himself to hearts that are ready to obey.

We want to unpack this together this morning.

And so the first thing I want you to see is that surrender opens the eyes.

Surrender opens the eyes.

If you are gonna live the Christian life, this is a reality you must come to grips with.

Clarity only comes on the far side of surrender.

Jesus doesn't call you to things that you fully understand, he calls you to himself and then he gives you the understanding.

There is an order here.

So that if you're gonna follow Jesus, your life will often look like Peter's.

Do you remember when Peter was called to step out onto the water?

Nothing made sense about walking on water.

And yet clarity would come as he surrendered himself to the call, stepped over the boat as nothing made sense, and then walked on water.

Jesus looks at this crowd and he says, This is how it works.

You see as you obey.

Clarity comes as you surrender.

Now Jesus is teaching here in the middle of the synagogue at the Feast of Booths.

It's a massive celebration in Jerusalem.

And last week we began to see him going up to the feast.

He did not go publicly like his brothers wanted.

He wasn't following their timeline, he was following the fathers.

And now, halfway through the feast, he steps into the temple and begins to teach.

And as he speaks, his words divide the crowd.

This crowd has one desire from Jesus.

They want proof.

They want to know that this man standing in the temple saying that he is the Son of God is the Son of God.

But as Jesus understands their longing for proof, he turns the spotlight back on their wills to say this: it doesn't matter what I do if your heart is not in a place of surrender, because you just cannot see unless your heart is surrendered.

There's no clarity without surrender.

So he says here, if anyone's will is to do God's will, meaning if someone is genuinely surrendered to God, if their heart is postured for obedience, then they will recognize the truth.

Until then, Jesus can do nothing for them.

In other words, if you want to see God, your problem is that God is not that God has not shown him to you, himself to you enough.

If you want to see God, your problem is not that you're just, you know, I'm a little too busy or there's just too much going on in life.

The problem is within it begins with a heart of surrender.

All the miracles, all the provisions, all the breakthroughs in the world would shine a light that cannot get through the window of your heart if the blinds are closed.

In other words, Jesus is giving us something really practical here.

He's showing us that spiritual clarity does not come from studying the Bible as much as you can or from being at church for a really long time.

Jesus is saying this: clarity comes from a position of surrender.

When you've surrendered your heart to God, then you will know.

It really boils down to this.

If your heart is already saying yes to God, before you even know what God is going to ask, then you are in a place where you can know God.

Then you are in a place where you can experience his presence.

Here's our problem, loved ones.

You and I position ourselves, instead of in a place of surrender, bowing before Christ's Lordship, we position ourselves in a place of cost-benefit analysis.

Well, let me hear it first, Jesus.

Let me know if it's gonna make sense first, Jesus.

Let me find clarity and then I'll surrender.

Jesus says it will not happen that way.

Surrender is required.

Now it's grass-cutting season.

And for me, that is a real mark of suffering in my life.

Some of you guys are super pumped about that.

You love cutting the grass.

But along with grass cutting season comes weed whacker season, which is an even more frustrating experience, especially if you have a gas weed whacker.

You probably have a dislocated shoulder right now.

Your kids came up, patted you on the shoulder, happy Father's Day.

Because you are a father, that was incredibly painful.

You dislocated your shoulder trying to start the weed whacker.

There's been a lot of technological progress in our age.

I don't know why it hasn't touched the weed whacker.

Doesn't start on the first pull, doesn't start on the fifth pull, doesn't start on the twelfth pull.

It just doesn't start.

I can tell I'm really resonating with the fathers here.

They're locked in right now.

Well, here's the principle.

Before the engine fires up, and I'm gonna get really technical here, you gotta push that little yellow bulb in.

You gotta prime the engine.

You gotta push it a couple times.

You gotta get fuel into the engine.

And what Jesus is telling us here is that surrender in the Christian life is the thing that fuels the engine of the spirit.

In other words, no surrender, no power, no surrender, no clarity, no surrender, no life.

It begins with surrender.

Apart from it, the Christian life does not work.

Now, Jesus here isn't asking for something from his followers that he's not modeling himself.

Look at verse 18.

He models this with the Father.

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory.

But here is Jesus proving himself.

The one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

So if our desire is to know Jesus, loved one, if your desire is to see Jesus, if your desire is to experience the nearness of Jesus, you must ask, have you built a relationship with him where you will only obey so long as it makes sense to you?

Because Jesus is here telling us this morning that clarity does not come on this side of obedience.

Clarity comes on the side of obedience where you have already given yourself to him and surrendered yourself to him.

And if you're waiting for God to show up in your life, but you have not surrendered your heart to him, it's the equivalent of waiting outside your friend's house, waiting for him to come out, but it's not your friend's heart at all, it's house at all.

It does not work without surrender.

Now we could illustrate this a number of places in scripture, but maybe it's nowhere more obvious than how we handle our money.

You understand that a biblical understanding of giving, the biblical principle of giving, makes no sense to the human mind.

It does not feel strategic.

It does not feel safe.

When you look at your budget, everything says hold back.

Everything says protect yourself.

But then scripture comes and it says something completely different that if we you know, if we can just get back the cr past the Christian ease that we often have, it makes absolutely no sense.

Look at it here at Proverbs 11.

Look what it says.

And loved one, ask yourself if you believe this.

One gives freely, yet grows all the richer.

Another withholds what he should give and only suffers want.

Does that make sense to you?

I mean, I got my master's in divinity.

I've studied the Bible in Greek and Hebrew.

I read that, and I'm just saying the math isn't mathing.

And yet I love what one of our elders, Dave Locke, often says: God's math is not our math.

And so the question is not, can you make sense of it?

The question is, do you believe it?

Have you surrendered yourself to the word of God?

Well, here's the heart check as we apply this specific truth to our life.

Have we built a relationship with Jesus where we only give when it makes sense to us?

Because if so, I want you to understand, you will never give in the way he's calling you to.

You'll never see the freedom that comes on the other side of trusting God with the things that he has given to us.

We can apply this in so many different places, can't we?

As we think about evangelism, has God ever told you how that conversation will go before you have it?

You never know.

And yet God says go, and so you obey and you go, and you know you're filled with these fears of what if they reject me, or what if I make a fool of myself, or what if I do that?

And God's not saying, hey, listen, no, you'll be okay, like you're gonna do it.

He's saying, no, you go.

You might make a fool of yourself.

You probably will.

You might be rejected.

I mean, I know my son certainly was most of the time.

He says, you just go.

You just obey, and clarity will come on the other side of obedience.

Surrender opens the eyes.

But loved one, as we look at our hearts, we come to understand this.

Our heart is never fully surrendered.

And Jesus wants the present of this area of life to say this: that just as surrender sows seeds of clarity in our life, so that we have understanding when our heart is postured with this posture of surrender, so resisting God's word sows seeds of confusion.

And this is what exactly what we see in John 7.

See, in John 7, there is this escalating tension where the more Jesus speaks, the more confused the crowd gets.

And certainly this will increase throughout Jesus' ministry until eventually they hang him on the cross.

It seems to be the case that whenever Jesus speaks and brings clarity to his words, he either finds people who are eager and all the more eager to follow him, or people who are more resistant to what his words actually mean.

That's because the second thing I want you to see is that resistance hardens the heart.

Surrender opens the eyes, but resistance hardens the heart.

So look here at verse 19 with me, and notice what Jesus says.

Has not Moses given you the law?

Yet none of you keeps the law.

Why do you seek to kill me?

Now, Jesus, as he speaks to this crowd, is not speaking to pagans.

He is speaking to the most devoted Jewish followers of his day.

He is in the middle of the temple, John tells us.

He's speaking to a people who not only know the scriptures, they claim to honor the law of Moses.

And yet, isn't it ironic that they seek to kill the very one the law was pointing to?

And loved one, I want you to see something very dangerous here.

That when we resist to what God is calling us to, our hearts are hardened to his word, so that we are blinded to reality.

Do you know this about the nature of sin?

When you resist God's will, God is calling you to serve, God is calling you to love, God is calling you to forgive, he's calling you to worship, he is calling you to all these things.

When you resist it, it is not neutral in your life, it is active.

It changes you and it hardens your heart.

And it is exactly what we see here that the ones in Jesus' ministry who have the hardest hearts to his words are the ones who spend all day sitting before his word.

But are you scared right now?

That because their heart is not positioned in surrender, their heart is incredibly hard.

And loved one, that ought to scare us this morning as we sit in the presence of God's word.

Are you fooling around with God?

Are you messing around with God?

Are you here this morning, like just kind of like, okay, I'll give this Sunday.

Morning, but nothing's really gonna change because listen, every time you hear God's word and you don't do something, it hardens your heart more, and we see it here.

The danger of resisting, it distorts your self-perception, it creates spiritual blindness, it makes you think you're aligned with God when in reality you are opposing him.

And look at it's it's all here.

Look how the crowd responds.

Resistance has hardened their heart to the point where when the Son of God is in their presence speaking to them, instead of receiving his words with humility and repent repentance, look how they respond in verse 20.

Do you see this?

Put your eyes on the text.

You have a demon.

Who is seeking to kill you?

It's absurd.

I mean, these people that Jesus are talking to are literally plotting his death.

But when he calls it out, they begin to sort of like gaslight them.

I mean, it'll be the equivalent of someone stealing your wallet.

And when you go and you know, you point it out to them, they're holding your wallet and they're accusing you.

How could you say I would ever do something like that?

That is exactly what's going on here.

Do you see how blind that because these people have studied the Word of God but haven't surrendered their heart to it, do you see how blind that they have become?

This is what resistance does.

Resistance shuts that little flick off in your heart.

It goes into the settings of the browser of your heart and it turns off conviction.

And it turns blame outward.

So that you deflect, you deny, you convince yourself that the problem is always elsewhere.

I mean, man, we know people who are like that, don't we?

I mean, you know people who like you see the problems in their life clearly.

This is not a time to nudge your spouse, okay?

You know those people, you see their problems clearly, but anytime it comes up, what do they do?

They deflect, they deny, they can't see it, and and you kind of shake your head because you know they think they're in the right, but you can just see it so clearly.

And loved one, you think you're, you think you're you, that won't be a problem with you?

You think you see everything so clearly?

So that in your own life there's not this sort of blame shifting, this this sort of self-distortion, this spiritual blindness.

Jesus is pointing at our life here and saying, listen, every time you've resisted my word, it has hardened your heart and led to a spiritual blindness.

You hear a convicting sermon.

You immediately think of someone else who needs to hear it.

You feel the Spirit pressing you to confess a sin or to turn in an area of your life, but you start debating whether it's really that serious.

Five minutes ago, you hear a call to biblical giving.

You shrug it off.

I'm glad that application is over because that not doesn't work for me.

You feel called to serve, you convince yourself you're too busy, life's too chaotic.

You know you're spiritually coasting, but you keep telling yourself it's just a busy season, I'll get over it.

I want you to see this.

This resistance is not passive in your life, it is active.

It is like a weed, it sprouts and then it sprouts and then it sprouts.

You cannot control it.

It fills you with delusion.

It makes you think that disobedience is the right path forward.

Loved one, what happened with Eve from the time that God said to her, if you eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will die.

What happened between that time and the time that she looked at it and desired it for life?

Jesus is looking to expose this inconsistency in us.

This is Jesus' mercy this morning, that he is like a physician that comes and points right to the problem.

The problem is that our heart is not surrendered to him.

And so here he begins to refer back to the healing at the pool of Bethesda.

If you were with us through the Gospel of John, you remembered when we studied this together, Jesus found a lame man on the Sabbath at the pool of Bethesda, and he made that man whole.

Look what he said, look what Jesus says then in verse 27.

Jesus answered them, I did one work and you all marvel at it.

Now, this word marvel is not a sense of awe or bewilderment.

It's it's this, he's using it in the sense that they were shocked and they were surprised.

You remember that from the story.

You remember the audible gasp of John 5 when Jesus told that man to pick up his mat, and how could he call them to pick up his mat on the Sabbath?

Which is mind-blowing to us because like he just healed a man who had been lame for 21 years, and now like this is what the religious people are angry about that he's got to pick up his mat.

That one act of Jesus' mercy, healing the man on a Sabbath, it exposed their rage.

And what Jesus is exposing here is just how tightly they were clinging on to the wrong thing.

Their spiritual resistance had blinded them to reality.

So that when when they uh exposed their when their anger was exposed because of Jesus' healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda, a great irony was exposed in their own life.

The irony was that even though they said they were followers of God, they cared more about protecting their religious system than exposing the merciful heart of God.

So look then what Jesus says in verses 22 to 23.

You can read this with me in your Bible.

Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers, and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

If on the Sabbath a man received circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be break broken, are you angry with me because I on the Sabbath made a man's whole body well?

What Jesus is doing is exposing their hypocrisy.

This wasn't a new tension for the Jewish people.

The Jewish people had two laws that at times contradicted each other.

The first law was that on the eighth day of a child's life you were to cut off a certain part of a body part.

Okay, I'm keeping this a little PG this morning.

The second law was that on the Sabbath day you were to rest.

Well, one law says rest, the other law says circumcise, and depending on how the calendar lines up, those two things may find themselves in contradiction to each other.

And so which one do you break?

Parents, you face these kind of dilemmas all the time, don't you?

You promised I will never be the kind of parent who is anything but patient and loving with my children.

That was one principle.

Another principle you had, you never had to put it in writing, but it was that we don't put peanut butter on the cat.

And when the peanut butter comes out and it's going towards the cat, one principle has to go here, and it is the patience principle.

You understand this dilemma.

So here are the Jewish people, a child needs circumcision.

What do you do on the Sabbath?

Well, you get up off the couch and you circumcise the child.

You cut off the uncleanness and you bring mercy into that child's life.

That became the guiding principle in the Jewish tradition.

Mercy overrides ritual.

Now, here they believe that circumcision cleanses the unclean of a child, so that even on the Sabbath, if it is performed, it is an act of mercy that God smiles upon.

Here they are, when Jesus on the Sabbath doesn't just make a single body part clean, he makes a whole man clean, and they are furious.

It's a sobering reality of what happens to us when we resist God's word.

This was not a minor drift.

They had lost the heart of God.

Loved one, when we cling to rules, when we perform rituals, when we even defend our system of faith, we can do all those things, but the presence of God can depart from us and we don't even notice.

So that it begs us to ask the question of ourselves: is it possible that what we have experienced in life is not just a minor drift from God's word, but losing the very heart of God?

Is it possible that you have kept the structure of religion but not kept the heart of it?

That's what resistance does.

Resistance to God's word, it comes to church, it reads the Bible, it knows the verses, but it uses all those things as a shield from God to keep God from seeing what's really inside, to keep God from a heart of surrender.

A resistant heart quotes theology, but lacks love.

It argues doctrine, but lacks mercy.

It keeps the law, but it misses the Lord.

We want to do a heart check this morning.

We want to take God's word and use it as a mirror to ask if what is true of this crowd is true of us as well.

And so these questions are going to come up on the screen, but I want you to just take a moment and the quiet of your own thoughts to think about these things.

Are there places in your life, loved ones, where obedience has become a performance?

Are there places in your life where protecting your comfort has taken priority over others, over showing love, overshowing mercy, overshowing compassion, over the service of other people?

And I want you to understand that where the answer to those questions is yes, Jesus is offering, standing in front of you this morning, offering you life, but so long as you continue in those things, you will not receive it.

Because you are not surrendered to his word.

You cannot see him.

Because you have built a system that functions with a religious ritual that is ruled by religious law, but that God is no longer in.

And it's a condemning reality for us, loved ones.

Reminded of what A.

W.

Tozer said.

It says if the Holy Spirit was withdrawn from the church today, 95% of what we do would go on, and no one would know the difference.

You keep all the right pieces in place, but God is not in it.

And it is an incredibly dangerous place to be, because this resistance will only harden your heart more and more.

But loved one, the good news of the gospel is this that as hard as your heart gets, Jesus has not withdrawn himself from you.

And as hard as this the heart of this crowd is, Jesus is still standing in their presence.

Even though their resistance intensifies, and we're gonna see it's gonna intensify all the more.

Jesus does not retreat, he keeps speaking truth.

And a loved one, if you're here this morning, that is what he's doing with you.

You are not too far gone because he's brought you here, and through his word and Holy Spirit, he is speaking to you, and I'm praying that he's bringing this conviction and that you actually have the strength in the Holy Spirit to do something about it.

This leads to our third point.

What I want you to see here is that mercy gives the light.

Mercy gives the light.

Look at verse 25 to 27 with me.

The crowd here is still stuck in speculation.

Is this not the man whom they seek to kill?

They are have just been shown how they can know Jesus.

And there's something incredibly ironic about their words here because they're still talking about how to know Jesus.

Again, their hearts are not surrendered.

So when even when Jesus says, hey, listen, if your will was to do God's will, then you would know me, then they're still saying, Well, how can I know Jesus?

They can't hear Jesus' word.

It's like talking to a brick wall.

And so look at what they say.

Thinking about this reality that they have just been told how to know, how to know, it's rather absurd that in verse 26 they say, and here he is speaking openly, and they say nothing to him.

How can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Christ?

But we know where this man comes from, and when the Christ appears, no one will know where he comes from.

Jesus has just said, you can know.

They now say, nobody can know.

They've decided what the Messiah needs to look like, and Jesus doesn't fit.

But loved one, do you see the merciful heart of Jesus here?

When their hearts harden, Jesus keeps speaking.

And in verse 28, it says it so simply.

So Jesus proclaimed as he taught in the temple.

What would you do with these people by this point?

I'll tell you exactly what I would.

I mean, if you guys were like that to me on a Sunday morning, I would throw up my Bible in the air and I would walk out this way, even though there's no door there, just for the dramatic effect of it.

I would be sickened.

And yet here is Jesus continuing to proclaim, always pressing through our resistance to offer mercy one more time, saying this, you know me and you know where I come from, but I have not come from my own accord.

He who sent me is true.

The translation is this you think you know me, but you don't, and I'm not here on my own.

I have been sent from heaven with a divine message for you.

And yet the sobering reality of this passage is that as hard as the heart of the crowd has gotten, verse by verse, we only realize that it can get harder still.

So then in verse 30, they try to arrest him.

And in verse 32, the religious leaders send officers to take him away.

But here's what we need to see.

Jesus is still offering himself until in verses 33 and 34.

It's so heartbreaking what he says, but he gives them the final word.

Look what he says, and he's speaking this to us this morning.

I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.

You will seek me and not find me.

Where I am, you cannot come.

Loved one, if if you do you see the danger of resisting God's word here?

If you keep resisting God's word, there is a time coming where you will want to find Jesus and he will no longer be there.

And even now, as their resistance grows, Jesus keeps speaking.

This is the the mercy of Jesus Christ.

It is an it's the mercy of Jesus that brings us here today.

It is that no matter how resistant your heart is this morning, you came this morning and Jesus' voice is ringing through the pages of scripture to your heart, asking you once again, even though maybe you've been resistant all week, maybe you've been resistant for years and years and years, maybe all your life you have resisted God's grace.

And here is Jesus this morning, bringing you here for a reason, so that his voice can echo with your ear into your ears, and that the Holy Spirit can make this profound impact on your heart, that his voice is speaking, calling you to repentance, and his mercy is paving the way for you there.

But he will not wait forever.

That's why the author of Hebrews quotes the psalmist saying, Today, today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.

And loved one, we've heard his voice this morning.

Jesus has been speaking to you, not to condemn you, but to call you back.

That as hard as your heart may have been, his mercy is stronger still.

That as long as you have resisted his grace, his grace has waited.

But it will not wait forever.

If you've heard his voice this morning, do not harden yourself to it.

Surrender to his voice today.

It was Spurgeon who once said this: do not sit here and say, I will repent tomorrow.

Says, the road to hell is paved with such bricks.

And loved one, I would compel you not to add another brick this morning, but to turn and surrender to the voice of Jesus this morning that is calling you to himself.

Calling you to life.

Maybe you've been walking with Jesus for years, but the light has felt dim.

Clarity is gone.

And deep down in a moment like this, you really wonder, can Jesus love someone like me?

I mean, I certainly know how I'm with people.

I know how long my patience can be tested.

Could Jesus really love me?

Does he still show himself to people that are as far off as I am?

And I want you to see the hope in this passage and the hope in this morning that the answer is yes.

Because the light of Jesus does not come because of your performance.

The light of Jesus does not shine into the window of your heart because you've lived a righteous and good life.

What is it?

It is his mercy.

It is his mercy this morning that calls you back to him again.

When your heart is resistant, he still stands outside and knocks, calling you to himself.

When you have gone the wrong way, he speaks so calmly and summons you back.

When your heart is cold and weary, he does not withdraw, he draws near.

This is his mercy.

And his voice this morning is your invitation to surrender your life to him.

Surrender opens the eyes.

Resistance hardens the heart.

Mercy gives the light.

So that again and again as his people we would be called back to remember and to respond to the voice of the one who not only speaks but makes a way.

You should have received a cup on your way in.

If you didn't, the ushers are coming down to the front now.

And I'm gonna ask that they would come all the way to the front and give one to me, because I snuck in a front door and missed that.

What we hold in our hands here, the bread and the blood, is not a reward for perfect surrender.

It is a reminder of mercy.

There is a reason why the juice represents blood and the cracker represents a body.

It is because it should have been ours.

But the bread reminds us that his body was broken for the hard-hearted, that his blood was spilled for those who would resist him.

This is why Scripture gives us two warnings before we take this.

It reminds us first that if you've never surrendered your life to Jesus, that you let this pass you, this is not for you.

Second, it's that if there's an area in your life where you're still unwilling to surrender, while this is a moment to come clean before God and accept a renewed, his renewed presence in your life, if that remains to be the case in your life that you're unwilling to surrender to him, that you let this pass.

Before we take these elements together, I want to just pause for a moment of silent reflection.

And so maybe we together, as the body of Christ, can bow our heads here and close our eyes and reflecting on the cross, ask ourselves this question: How has Jesus revealed himself to me today?

Where have I been resisting him?

What is he calling me to surrender?

If you take off the top layer, you'll get to the bread.

On the night he was betrayed, scriptures say Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

Let's take the bread together.

In the same way, after supper, he took the cup and said, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Let's do this whenever you drink it in remembrance of me.

Let's take the cup together.

Would you stand with me as we turn to the Lord in prayer.

Father, we thank you for communion.

Where we are reminded that despite our resistance, Lord, unless we are blind this morning, all of us have in our hearts.

Lord, you meet with us.

And the elements that we have just taken together remind us that you made a way for that to be possible by shedding your blood, by the by your flesh being pierced.

Not because you had any sin in yourself, but because you had taken our sin upon your shoulders, because you had been treated on the cross like a rebel who had resisted the will of God, even though you had only been surrendered to him fully.

So that now as God looks at us, he sees one who has fully surrendered himself.

God, we know it's not the case, but we rejoice.

And in light of the reality, Lord, that we still fall so short, though we are covered by the precious blood of Jesus Christ, we commit ourselves to you to say, Lord, that we are surrendering our lives to you.

Lord, that you are ours.

And God, we pray this in the name of your Son.

Amen.

Let's worship together.