So John 5. For the sake of context, I'll start in verse 39. This is the Lord Jesus speaking. He says, you search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life. It is these that testify about me. and you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. I do not receive glory from men, but I know you, that you do not have the love of God in yourselves. I have come in my Father's name, and you do not receive me. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. The one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Father, we thank you for the words in this passage. We pray that you would send your light and your truth now and help us to understand them. It is in your son's precious name that we ask. Amen. You may be seated. And this morning we are picking up on our study of the sin of unbelief, the sin of unbelief. We started last week that study, and wrapping it up today, the final verses of John chapter five are really a great place to think about this, because here we find Jesus' personal expose of the Jews' unbelief. He had been brought in, as you remember, before the Sanhedrin, the highest court of the Jews, to answer some spurious charges made against Him. However, along the way, like a master defense counsel, the Lord actually begins to turn the table on the prosecution. Every witness that He calls to the stand ends up testifying for Him and against the leaders of Israel. And so he brings their guilt out in the open. He shines the spotlight on them as unbelievers through and through. And actually, in verses 40 to 47, our passage this morning, he gives them really four reasons why it is that they are rejecting their Messiah. Four reasons why they are spurning the gospel. And those are helpful for us to look at because we ourselves have to overcome unbelief in our own lives. After all, if there is no worse sin than unbelief, as we said last week, then faith has to be the most excellent virtue. We need faith the way jewels are, or we need faith. And the way that jewels are rare in the earth, so is faith. That's why the Lord Jesus wondered if he would even find any faith upon his second coming. Faith is rare. And the way jewels, on the other hand, are pleasant to the eye, so is faith. That's why Isaiah described it as a feast of bread and wine and milk. Faith is pleasant. So we need to fight for it. We need to go to war against unbelief. And one of the ways to do that is by recognizing the factors that cause unbelief. And as I mentioned, there are four here, four reasons why men reject Jesus Christ. And the first of those is stubbornness. Stubbornness. Notice what Jesus tells the Jews here in verse 40. And you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. This is the first reason why the Jews are not believing. They are unwilling to come. They're stubborn. Of course, the coming that Jesus is talking about here is not a corporeal coming. Many people came to the Lord physically for food and miracles and such things, who later shouted Him down, crucify Him, crucify Him. So they had come to Him physically, but not spiritually. And that's the kind of coming that Jesus has in mind here, a spiritual coming, to embrace Him for who He is, for all that He is, as the only Savior, the only fitting substitute, the only fitting substitute who bleeds and dies at the cross for me, who sheds a blood that is precious enough, in the words of Isaiah 13, 14, to redeem man from death. That's why it says here, you are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. Of course, the assumption here is that as long as you remain outside of Christ, you are dead. Death in the Bible is primarily a spiritual reality. That's why Jesus will tell Martha in Chapter 11 verses 25 and 26. He who believes in him will live even if he dies. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. So sure, there is a physical death. We all have to die. But in the most proper sense of the term, death is a spiritual condition. And God's children are alive, while unbelievers are described in Scripture as dead. They have fallen away from the living God and have entered into communion with Satan. The image of God in them has been marred. So they have no spiritual life, or truth, or love, or holiness, or glory. Their souls are evil. The unbeliever cannot delight in God. And he teems with hateful, and envious, and impure, and proud, and unrighteous, and deceitful thoughts. So he readily presents his members, the members of his body, his ears, his hands, his feet, his eyes as instruments of unrighteousness. That is what spiritual deadness entails. No wonder why hell is the only fitting place for the unbelieving the unbeliever. the dead man, a place of eternal despair and torment, with no joy, no glory, no comfort, no food or drink or light or sleep or friendships, and the complete absence of God's presence. That is the home of the dead. So interestingly, that is exactly what these men would have themselves chosen for themselves. You do not believe that? Look at Jesus's words again. You are unwilling to come to me so that you may have life. In other words, you want death. You prefer it that way. You see a powerful illustration of that, by the way, in Luke 16, the account of the rich man and Lazarus. The rich man is in agony in the flames of hell. And yet, if you remember, he actually never asks to be let out. But rather, he wants Lazarus to come to him with a little water to cool off his tongue. He belongs in hell, and he knows it. And so are the Jews here choosing death over life. And so all of this means that sinners die not because they cannot come to Christ, but because they will not come to Christ. So, ironically, it is their free will that destroys them. Now, of course, that brings up the question, on the other hand, of whether our free will can save us. In other words, you have to ask, could the Jews have made themselves willing to come to Christ? Could they have received him apart from a miraculous intervention by the Holy Spirit, apart from his regenerating power? And the answer, contrary to what Arminianism would say, is absolutely not. After all, 1 Corinthians 2.14 says that a natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them because they are spiritually appraised. And Jeremiah 13, 23 says, Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots? Then you also can do good who are accustomed to doing evil. And Job 14, 4 says, Who can bring a clean thing out of the unclean. There is no one. And Romans 8 says, those who are in the flesh cannot please God. Tell me, do you think that receiving Christ pleases God? Because it does. And in that case, then Paul is saying that man cannot receive the Lord Jesus on his own. It's impossible for him. He's like a little child looking at a complex math equation. He sees the numbers, but they mean nothing to him. Or else he's like a bird with broken wings. He's free to fly, but he cannot bring himself to do it. We call that total inability, total inability. And it comes directly as a result of Adam's fall, who was told in the garden that in the day he ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, he would surely die. And he did, and all of us died in him. because he was more than just a private individual. No, he was standing as the head of the human race, our federal head. Romans 5.12 says, 1 Corinthians 5.22, So no wonder David says in Psalm 55 5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity and in sin. My mother conceived me. We are helpless. We can do technically whatever we want, but we cannot want what we want. So by nature we want death. This was the Jews. They wanted death. And notice, interestingly here, the Lord is actually holding them responsible for it. He's not giving them a pass. He's not. He is actually rebuking them as stubborn people who are despising his free offer to them. He's saying that that was their ruin. You said, but isn't that unjust? Well, not according to Paul. Romans 9, 19 and on, he says, You will say to me, Why then does he still find fault? For who resists his will? On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God? The thing molded will not say to the molder, Why did you make me like this? Will it? Or does not the potter have a right over the clay to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use? In other words, God is God. He does whatever He wants with His creation. And when He saves, it is all of grace. There is absolutely nothing in you or in me to induce the Lord to save us. It is all grace. In fact, Romans 5.8 says that Christ died for us while we were yet His enemies, while we were yet sinners, while we were opposed to God. So he had he had every reason not to save us. And yet he did. And that should lead you and I to worship should make us bow our knees before the Lord. that we have been given grace that we did not deserve, that we have been made willing in the day of Christ's power, that we have been enabled to receive Him while all our hearts and all our tongues join to admire the feast. Each of us cry with thankful tongues, Lord, why was I a guest? Why was I made to hear thy voice and enter while there's room when thousands make a wretched choice and rather starve than come? That was the Jews. They were choosing starvation over a feast. They're not believing in the Lord because they did not want to. They were stubborn. Now, there's a second reason in this passage as to why men reject Christ. And we call that ungodliness. Ungodliness, simply put. That's where the Lord is going to go here. But first, He feels the need to make a clarifying statement. Look at verse 41. He says, I do not receive glory from men. The word glory here is synonymous with honor or even recognition. And the idea of receiving has to do with receiving so as to rely on. So Jesus is saying that the opinions of people add nothing to Him. Because otherwise, every one of us, every man and woman, is obligated to worship. right? And to pray to and believe in and to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. He made us and not we ourselves. He is worthy of our praise, and he does receive our worship when we render it to him. And an illustration of that will come in Chapter nine, verse 38, where it says that the blind man who had been healed worshipped him, and he did not stop him. And in chapter 20, verse 28, Thomas will call Him, My Lord and My God, and He will not shush Him. And then in Matthew 28, verse 9, it says that His disciples, after the resurrection, will take hold of His feet and worship Him, and He will not stand them. No, He will receive their worship, because they were doing only what they were supposed to be doing. They were worshipping the Lord who made them, and sustained them, and saved them. However, at this point here, what is happening, what He is saying is that these men are not adding anything to Him by accepting Him intrinsically. They're not making Him any more glorious than He already is. He already is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, God. He did not need the Jews worship. In other words, he isn't producing all of these witnesses or even defending his claims out of some sense of desperation, as if he felt sorry for himself that they were rejecting him. And he's scrambling for arguments to bolster his case. No, but rather he is mounting this astounding defense for the honor of God and the salvation of men. And that is really an important example for us to consider that we need to learn to disregard negative opinions and not to live by what other people think of me and to actually be concerned with God's glory and to be quick to defend God's honor, never ours. That is Jesus's mindset here. He's not trying to get some applause. That's why he's repeating the same idea that he expressed back in verse 34, where he said, the testimony which I receive is not from man. Except he's saying here, I don't receive glory from men. And yet he is going to expose why it is that they are not giving Glory to Him. He says in verse 42 here, Notice, I know you. This is the same thing that John had said in chapter 2, verse 23, where he said that the Lord did not need anyone to testify about man, because He Himself knew what was in man. In other words, He is omniscient. That's why in Revelation 2, verse 23, He will say, I am the one who searches the minds and hearts. So Christ knows everything that there is to know about you. He has the human heart as an open book before Him. And He is telling the Jews here that He knew them to be ungodly. That's why they were rejecting him. They were empty of God's love. You do not have the love of God in yourselves. And that's contrary to all outward appearances, right? Because as far as the eye could see, these men were the ones who loved God the most. They were zealous about the Law and the Temple. They prayed and gave alms. They were diligent in the Scriptures. They were leaders of God's people. And yet, Jesus is saying that they did not actually have any holy affections. It was all external. And they were a perfect representation of Isaiah 29, verse 13, where Isaiah says, these people draw near with their words and honor me with their lip service, but they remove their hearts far from me. And their reverence for me consists of tradition learned by Roe. In other words, religion was in their lips, but not in their hearts. So while they were performing some external ceremonies, they were still actually breaking the whole law. Why do I say that? Well, because the whole law is summarized by this statement. You shall love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind and strength. And the Jews had no love for Him. They were ungodly. And Jesus knows this by virtue of His being divine. But do you know what else? He could prove it. And He does that in verse 23. He says, I have come in my Father's name. and you do not receive me. Now, remember, to come in someone's name denotes this idea of coming according to someone's authority. For example, Peter will say and he'll heal the lame beggar in Jesus's name. Christian pastors baptize people in the name of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. So the Lord is saying here that He comes clothed in His Father's authority and power and His consent. And in doing so, in rejecting Him, they were showing that they seemed righteous outwardly, but they were actually ungodly. that they did not love God. And by the way, the proof of whether you love God is found in your obedience, right? That's why John will say in 1st John 1 6. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And in chapter 14 verse four, the Lord Jesus will say, If you love me, you will keep my commandments. So obedience is the evidence of love to God. And the Lord Jesus is telling the Jews here that since they are rejecting the one who came to them in the father's authority, then they were showing that they actually had no affection for God. Now, obviously, by the way, this teaches us that we do have a duty to embrace and submit gladly to the servants of God, pastors, teachers, elders who come to us in his authority, right? And that receiving them if their ministry is sanctioned by the Bible, becomes tantamount with receiving God Himself. That's why Paul says in Galatians 4.14, you received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus Himself. And in 1 Thessalonians 5 verses 12 to 13, he says, But we request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you and have charge over you in the Lord and give you instruction. and that you esteem them very highly in love because of their work. So our submission to godly elders is actually a reflection of our submission to the Lord in whose authority they come. Now, to be sure, I am not saying here that you should just render blind and uncritical submission to any man. Because in fact, the same passage is going to show that there is no virtue in embracing false teachers. And in fact, the opposite is true. Taking false teachers in is actually a sign of ungodliness. Notice what the Lord says here. If another comes in his own name, you will receive him. That was the second evidence of the Jews' ungodliness. The first one was that they rejected God's true servant. And the second one, on the flip side, is that they embraced false teachers, men who came in their own name. That means they were self appointed to their offices. And this is important because we tend to see those who fall for false teachers as mere victims. We see followers of the Pope or Joel Osteen or Benny Hinn or Joyce Meyer as victims. And sure, there is a sense in which we can say that they are. Otherwise, scripture would not refer to false teachers as wolves and exploiters and peddlers of the Word of God or hidden reefs. So sure, their followers are victims, but here's the key. They are not innocent victims. Otherwise, Christ would not be predicating the Jews' reception of those false prophets on their ungodliness. And that makes sense, because if you are all ears for Satan, then surely that must be a sign that there is something wrong inside. That's why in Deuteronomy 13 verse three, Moses told the Israelites that false prophets and dreamers were going to arise among them and that that was actually to test them. to see whether they loved the Lord. And then in 2 Thessalonians 2.11, Paul says that as a form of vengeance for not loving the truth and desiring salvation, God actually uses Satan to send a deluding influence to unbelievers, so that they will believe what is false, in order that they may be judged who did not believe the truth, but took pleasure in wickedness. So again, the Jews reaction against Christ and their embrace of false prophets actually reflected their ungodliness. They had no love of God in their hearts. So they were not believing Jesus. They were not receiving their Messiah because of their stubbornness, on the one hand. And they were not receiving their Messiah because of their ungodliness. Third. Third reason why men reject Jesus. And that is worldliness. Worldliness. Look at verse 44. How can you believe when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God? In other words, their ambition for earthly glory was getting in the way of the Gospel. They craved honor from people. So whereas Jesus refused to give any weight to man's opinions, the leaders of Israel lived for it. That's why he points out in Matthew chapter 22 verses five through seven, that they did all their deeds to be noticed by men, that they loved the places of honor at banquets and the chief seats in the synagogues and respectful greetings in marketplaces and being called rabbi. They had an unfettered ambition of being thought of highly by others, and that was bound to keep them from Jesus. Because after all, the Lord, the Lord himself was a humble man. No outward form or majesty. No pomp, no circumstance. Christ would have been an offense to every one of their sensibilities. Because they had convinced themselves that the Messiah was going to come with all of this glory imaginable. And that He was going to exalt them. in his kind of worldly kingdom, and he was going to put them in the high positions of power. And that was the illusion that had arrested their imaginations. And yet, here is the Son of God, a pitiful Galilean, a friend of sinners. No earthly glory again, no palace, no army, nothing but His Word and His miracles. So frankly, it didn't matter what He said or did, they were going to reject Him. Because their mind was set on this world and not on God. That's why Jesus says, you do not seek the glory that is from the one and only God. I remember in verse 40, the Lord rebuked the Jews for not wanting to come to him for life. But here he is rebuking them for not seeking glory from God. And the two really are the same. That's why Paul says in Romans to first seven that those that those who by perseverance and doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality get in turn eternal life. However, because this world belongs to Satan, then worldly ambition and eternal life stand as complete opposite ends of one another. You cannot have both. You cannot have the world and God. That's why James says in James chapter 4 verse 4, Therefore, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. And John says in 1 John 2.15, Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The Jews could not have possibly loved the Father because their first love. was the praises of men, the glory that is in this world. And so they rejected Jesus Christ. They rejected the gospel, again, because they were stubborn, because they were ungodly, and because they were worldly. One more. Men reject the gospel because they are arrogant. Arrogant. Look at the opening of verse 45. Do not think that I will accuse you before the Father. Now, the verb to accuse here is a compound term with the words against and the verb to speak in an assembly. So really, we're talking about a formal accusation in a court setting here. Notice, the members of the Sanhedrin have brought Christ in for a kind of examination. They're passing judgment on Him. But as we said, by bringing one witness after another, He has been turning the tables on them. So now they are on the stand. However, this is no human court that He has them in, but a divine court. They're standing before the Father. But in all of this, Jesus has to make an important qualification. He says, I will not accuse you before the Father. Why? This is a comment on His office. Remember, He did not come into the world to condemn the world. He did not come to bring charges against sinners or to accuse. That was not His mission. His mission was to take sin upon His own body and to be and to absorb the father's wrath on the cross and to rise up on the third day for the justification of the many. So his mission was to save. And frankly, he did not need to be a witness himself against the Jews, since there were already plenty of witnesses against them. The father, we saw that last week, the father, John the Baptist, his works, the scriptures. And now he brings a final witness, Moses. He says, the one who accuses you is Moses, in whom you have set your hope. So Christ is using their own words against them because they saw themselves as the most faithful followers of Moses. In chapter nine, verse 28, it says, they reviled the blind man healed by the Lord and said, you are Jesus's disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we do not know where he is from. So they boasted that they were followers of Moses, that he was their leader. And yet Jesus is telling them, by the way, Moses is your accuser here. The verb to accuse in the Greek is a present participle. The one who accuses you, who keeps accusing you is Moses. Now, of course, this cannot mean that Moses was personally accusing them, because when he was on the earth, you might remember he was the mediator between God and the people of Israel. So if he ever did anything, it was to intercede for them. It was a kind of picture of the Lord Jesus. But on the other hand, after he died, he would not have been concerned, of course, with the affairs of people in the earth. He was in heaven, in God's presence. So Jesus here has to be speaking about the writings of Moses, right? His law. His law was accusing them. His law would have exposed each and every one of them as enemies of God. Because that law would have required them, each one of them, to bow the knee to Jesus Christ. And they were refusing to do that. So they were acting according to their own authority. They were arrogant. They were not doing what Moses said, even if they pretended to be under him. So you could have the Bible, you could go to a good church, you could have all of the privileges that Christianity itself can afford. But if you do not have obedience, if you do not live as God would have you in Scripture, then those privileges at the end become witnesses against you. Unimproved privileges turn into prosecuting witnesses. That is what happened to the Jews here. They had Moses, but they did not actually believe him. That's what it says in chapter, in verse 46. For if you believed Moses, you would believe me. So they reject. his teachings, Moses' teachings. And what did he teach? Well, look at the next clause. The Lord says, for he wrote about me. He wrote about me. Isn't that interesting? Now, of course, at this point I could give you some messianic passages where Moses brings up the Messiah openly, like the one about the seed of the woman or Shiloh or the coming prophet like him. There are plenty of open references there in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible to the Messiah, and we could go over those. However, I think it is worthy of note that Jesus himself is not bothering to do that. He doesn't say, here, let me show you a few places where Moses mentions me explicitly. And there's a reason for that. He could have done it, but he doesn't do that. And I think that Paul captures that reason very well in Romans 10 verse four, where he says, Christ is the end or the design of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes. In other words, Christ is the telos, the objective, the end goal of Moses's ministry and his writings. Without him, everything just puffs up like smoke. His ministry topples like a house of cards. It becomes even nonsensical. Think about it. Without Christ, you would not even be able to make sense of the tabernacle. or the sacrifices, or the ceremonies that Moses had instituted. And then you would not be able to make sense of the shadows that he holds up, like Melchizedek with the bread and the wine, and having no genealogy, and the fiery serpent. The whole body of literature and the system of laws was meant to bring to Christ. That's why, by the way, this is the central theme of the book of Hebrews. So if the Jews rejected Jesus, it has to be because they were not believing Moses. That's what the Lord says in verse 47. But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words? Now, of course, this is not to suggest that Moses somehow has a greater authority than Christ, but rather Jesus is accommodating himself to his audience. And he is saying that if they had truly honored Moses and had accepted his law as the very Word of God, then they would have gone where the law wanted to take them. And that was Christ. In other words, they had not accepted the premise, and therefore they were not arriving at the conclusion. So they were not believing in the Lord. And that proved again that they were not under authority. They were arrogant, self willed, unsubmissive. They were a law unto themselves. So again, arrogance will keep men from God, from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. So worldliness, ungodliness and stubbornness. and then arrogance will keep us from the Lord Jesus Christ. So we need to be wrestling with God, that He will take those sins away from us and increase our faith. Because again, faith is rare, faith is pleasant, faith is useful. And so that we will say with the hymn writer, My soul obeys the almighty call and runs to this relief. I would believe thy promise, Lord. Oh, help my unbelief. To the dear fountain of thy blood, incarnate God, I fly. Here, let me wash my spotted soul from crimes of deepest die. That is what the Lord Jesus offers to us. a washing, a cleansing. And He is offering it to you this morning. If you have never trusted in Him, if you have never come to Him as your Lord and Savior, put away your stubbornness, your worldliness, your arrogance. Turn from that and come to the Lord Jesus Christ. and He will cleanse you. He will wash you and give you eternal life. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for the Lord Jesus and for His gospel. We pray that you would continue to lead us in the way of righteousness, and that we would see Him more and more glorious every day, every hour, every minute, every second, until He appears to rescue His people. We pray for those who are among us who do not know Him, that You would open their eyes and grant them to see the King and His beauty. that Christ would be exalted in every one of our lives, we ask in his name and for his sake. Amen.