John 7:25-36 Sermon

Christian Standard Bible (Chapter 7)

25 Some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Yet, look, he’s speaking publicly and they’re saying nothing to him. Can it be true that the authorities know he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from. When the Messiah comes, nobody will know where he is from.”

28 As he was teaching in the temple, Jesus cried out, “You know me and you know where I am from. Yet I have not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true. You don’t know him; 29 I know him because I am from him, and he sent me.”

30 Then they tried to seize him. Yet no one laid a hand on him because his hour had not yet come. 31 However, many from the crowd believed in him and said, “When the Messiah comes, he won’t perform more signs than this man has done, will he?”

32 The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things about him, and so the chief priests and the Pharisees sent servants to arrest him.

33 Then Jesus said, “I am only with you for a short time. Then I’m going to the one who sent me. 34 You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”

35 Then the Jews said to one another, “Where does he intend to go that we won’t find him? He doesn’t intend to go to the Jewish people dispersed, among the Greeks and teach the Greeks, does he? 36 What is this remark he made: ‘You will look for me, and you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come’?”

We pick up this week with Jesus still at the Festival of Tabernacles. Would seem he's going day after day and teaching in some way. This is taking place over several days, not all in one scene per se.

And in light of His continued teaching, of His sin exposing ministry that we talked about last week, there is the range of opinion concerning Him. There are the jewish leaders, who hate Jesus and wish to put him to death. And there are those who are genuinely curious, who are open to the possibility that He is the Messiah. And there are others who don’t think He can be the messiah, based on some misunderstandings of messianic prophecies that we will look at.

But I want to make sure we are seeing how this scene connects to the rest of the Biblical storyline for a moment. Chapter 6 started with Jesus miraculously feeding the Jews with bread while they are out in the wilderness. Next, Jesus miraculously crosses the sea. On the other side of the sea, he talked about Moses, manna, and the new covenant. The people didn’t like what he said, so they began to grumble and complain; many turned and walked away in unbelief. It sounds familiar if you’ve read the Pentateuch. In Exodus God brought the children of Israel out of Egypt and into the wilderness. While they were there, he fed them with bread from heaven, called manna. To get them to the wilderness, he miraculously parted the sea so they could get across. While in the wilderness, he delivered to Moses the old covenant. The people began to grumble and complain, and by the time they made it to the promised land, the nation turned and walked away in unbelief, unwilling to follow God and his chosen leader into the land of promise.

None of this is random. This is a reminder that this Bible is not a compilation of moral lessons, but one big story about God’s redemption of humanity through His Son Jesus Christ.

And, like I said, the people are prone to reject that plan for themselves. We know from last week some of the reasons the leaders were rejecting Jesus, but in this passage we get some insight into some reasons that the people were split over Jesus’ identity.

One of these reasons for their uncertainty comes to light in verse 27. They say there that the reasons Jesus can’t be the Messiah is that the people won’t know where the Messiah is from.

Jesus’ Origin

The people’s misunderstanding about his origin leads to His explanation

What did they think and why - Jn 6:42 / Jn 7:42 / Mc 5:2 / Jn 7:41 / Mt 13:55

The ESV Study Bible (Chapter 7)

Some rabbis taught that the Messiah would be wholly unknown until he set out to procure salvation for Israel.

Some thought they knew for sure that the Messiah would be from Bethlehem, and we will see later in this very chapter that the people thought Jesus was born in Nazareth.

At any rate, the point is this: There is confusion around the origin of Jesus, and confusion over how His origin relates to His being the Messiah or not.

But Jesus takes this confusion and uses it to point towards His true origin, which is eternity past.

We see this in verse 28 and 29. He says, Before I’m from nazareth or Bethlehem, you need to know that I’m actually from God. God sent me. I have an eternal origin.

Scripture teaches plainly that Jesus birth is not when He started existing.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 1

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was with God in the beginning. 3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created. 4 In him was life,, and that life was the light of men. 5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.

This puts Jesus in a category unto Himself. False teachers throughout the centuries claimed to have received special revelation from God, but Jesus is the revelation of God in the flesh.

Hebrews 1:3“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word…”

So there are two categories of being - created, and uncreated.

In this one category, uncreated, there is God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And as God the Son, Jesus Christ has existed as for all eternity. He is uncreated creator.

And everything else in the universe is subordinate to Him. The planets, the stars, the oceans, the mountains, hurricanes, diseases, human beings, angels, demons, floods, bugs, birds, and anything else you can picture in your mind, if it is not uncreated, it is subordinate to Jesus Christ, because He is God.

And so the people’s problem, the reason they don’t see Jesus for who He is is because they don’t know God. To see Jesus is to see God. To recognize the identity of Jesus is to recognize the identity of the one true God, Yaweh.

But here’s the wild thing. The thing that is so hard to wrap our minds around, and the thing that this passage clearly sets out. In His eternal oneness with the Father, in His divinity, in His absolute sovereign authority over all of creation, He allowed Himself to be subjected to the sending of the Father for our salvation.

Jesus says He is sent by the Father. This can be tricky territory, but it is essential to our understanding of God that we get this right. So I want to establish some categories. For one, as I’ve mentioned, hold in your mind the category of uncreated creator. And in that category there is one being in three persons, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

And in this state, we cannot even look upon God without glorified eyes. We get glimpses of His eternal throne in places like Isaiah 6, where the prophet gets a mediated glimpse of God’s throne and immediately declares Himself to be a hopeless, unclean sinner. We get a glimpse of this throne in Revelation when John, the beloved disciple, the intimate friend of Jesus, gets such a glimpse of the throne of Jesus that the Bible says He falls down as though dead.

This is the throne of the uncreated creator God. This is the eternal throne of God, unapproachable light, surrounded by angels that cover their faces and eternally cry out holy, holy, holy. This is the transcendance of the creator God.

And then the other category is created beings. And Jesus, as uncreated creator, takes upon Himself a created physical body. He never ceases to be God, but is sent by the Father to humble Himself by taking on a human nature. And so we have the uncreated creator taking on a created human body.

And all of that transcendant eternal glory gets wrapped up in a created body. This is the wonder of the incarnation. That transcendant God becomes imminent. Approachable, knowable.

The same glorious voice that spoke the world into existence now speaks with sinful rejects over meals. The same glorious voice that caused mountains and oceans to come into being from nothing now speaks with a lonely outcast woman at a well and tells her that she can be forgiven.

We can’t miss the wonder of the phrase “he sent me.” This little phrase is packed with the glory of the gospel. You were hopelessly lost in your sin, without hope and without God, but He sent Him. You weren’t seeking God, but He sent Jesus. You were headed for an eternal separation from God, but He sent Jesus. You had no relationship to God and lacked the ability to establish a relationship with God, but He sent Jesus.

The eternally transcendent God has become eternally imminent through the incarnation of the Son.

This glorious truth also sets up a situation that can be difficult to understand. Because in some places, scripture almost sounds as if Jesus is somehow not equal to the Father.

For example, taking passages only from this specific book, the gospel of John, Christ said expressly of himself, “The Father is greater than I.” John 14:28. He also not only taught that the Father had sent him, but compared with that his own sending of his disciples, (John 17:18,) and declared that he came, not to do his own will but that of him that sent him, (John 6:38); that he came not of himself, (John 7:28); that he spoke not of himself, but that the Father had given him a commandment, what he should say, and speak, (John 12:49;) that his teaching was not his own, (John 7:16,) that the word they heard was not his, but the Father’s, (John 14:24;) that he had given and spoken the words given him by the Father, (John 8:26; 17:8,) that the Father had given him to do the work he had accomplished, (John 17:4); that he could do nothing of himself, but what he saw the Father doing, (John 5:19); that the Father was with him, and had not left him alone, (John 8:29,) and that the Father had sanctified (consecrated) him, (John 10:36.) Peter

So, Jesus is God. He is equal to the Father in all His glory. But there is a sense in which He submits to the Father. But this submission, if you look at all of these examples, they have to do with His life as a man. In His human nature, He is sent. In His human nature, the Father is greater. In His human nature, He speaks what the Father says. In His human nature, He can do nothing of himself, but only what He sees the Father doing.

An examination of these, and all similar statements in the Scriptures, shows they are in no respect inconsistent with the perfect equality of the persons as to the divine nature.

This should lead us to fall on our faces in humble worship. Jesus, the eternal, divine, all powerful uncreated creator, would subject Himself, in an almost impossible to believe display of divine humility, so that we could be saved from our sin.

Any time you are tempted to doubt God’s love for you or His grace towards you or His ability to use you, remember this phrase and take to heart all of it’s glorious implications: God sent Jesus.

Jesus’ Destination

But Jesus doesn’t just mention where He had come from. He points to where He is going, His divine destination.

Where is He going? Well to bring back an earlier passage I mentioned from Hebrews, He is going to the right hand of God. He’s going back where He came from.

Hebrews 1:3“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”

But something is going to be forever changed when Jesus gets back to where He was before.

He’s not simply going to travel back to the Father’s right hand. He is going to be killed, then buried, then raised to life, then ascend to the Father’s right hand as the ultimate vindication of all His claims. He is going to take with Him the scars of the cross. And, if it were possible, He is going to have attained a layer of glory through the glory of His crucifixion and resurrection.

So now, as He sits where He was before the foundation of the world, He receives glory not just for His status as God, but for the expression of God’s grace that has been displayed through His life, death, and resurrection.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 5

Then I saw in the right hand of the one seated on the throne a scroll with writing on both sides, sealed with seven seals. 2 I also saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, “Who is worthy to open the scroll and break its seals?” 3 But no one in heaven or on earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or even to look in it. 4 I wept and wept because no one was found worthy to open the scroll or even to look in it. 5 Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep. Look, the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered so that he is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”

6 Then I saw one like a slaughtered lamb standing in the midst of the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders. He had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent into all the earth. 7 He went and took the scroll out of the right hand of the one seated on the throne.

THE LAMB IS WORTHY

8 When he took the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb. Each one had a harp and golden bowls filled with incense, which are the prayers of the saints. 9 And they sang a new song:

You are worthy to take the scroll

and to open its seals,

because you were slaughtered,

and you purchased people

for God by your blood

from every tribe and language

and people and nation.

10 You made them a kingdom

and priests to our God,

and they will reign on the earth

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 1

15 He is the image of the invisible God,

the firstborn over all creation.

16 For everything was created by him,

in heaven and on earth,

the visible and the invisible,

whether thrones or dominions

or rulers or authorities—

all things have been created through him and for him.

17 He is before all things,

and by him all things hold together.

18 He is also the head of the body, the church;

he is the beginning,

the firstborn from the dead,

so that he might come to have

first place in everything.

19 For God was pleased to have

all his fullness dwell in him,

20 and through him to reconcile

everything to himself,

whether things on earth or things in heaven,

by making peace

through his blood, shed on the cross

The fact that Jesus was sent by the Father into this world to endure the suffering of death on our behalf and then return to His throne gives answer’s to some of life’s biggest questions.

Why does evil and suffering exist? Well, in part, so that Jesus could step into those things and endure them on our behalf and receive glory for His grace for all eternity. Without sin and suffering, He wouldn’t have been sent. And without being sent, He wouldn’t receive eternal worship for His redemptive suffering.

Why do we exist? To worship God and enjoy Him forever. To come to know and love and submit to and worship the one who was sent from heaven and returned to heaven.

What happens when we die? Well, if your faith is in Christ, you get to share in His resurrection. You get to share in His heavenly destination.

Let this little phrase, this reality, “The Father sent the Son” be your interpretive grid for everything that happens to you. Let that phrase be the lens through which you see everything in the world. The father sent the Son!

He tells people in this passage that they can’t go where He’s going. Why not? Because they don’t see Him as their messiah, as their savior. But when you and I come to see Jesus as Messiah, as our savior and Lord, the Bible says we get raised up and seated in heavenly places with Him. We get to share in His victory over death, His heavenly destination.

So, we see Jesus’ origin, and we see His destination. And the truth of the gospel is that we get to fall in behind Him, as he blazes a trail to heaven through the overgrown territories of our sin, and we get to enjoy the fruits of His labor. We can go where He goes, because He came where we were.

And as you think about the big picture here, where Jesus goes doesn’t just involve a mystical location in heaven, it involves a relationship with God. Their biggest problem wasn’t that they couldn’t figure out what physical location Jesus was going, their biggest problem is that they did not know the God who sent Him. Look at verse 28: He says their problem is that they don’t know the one who sent Him, they don’t know God.

He’s saying here, I am going back not just to a place, but to a person. Look at verse 33: I am going back to the one who sent me. It’s not just a place, but a person. And part of what we get to enjoy and experience through the victory of Jesus is not just the destination of heaven, but the intimate knowledge of God. When you’re in Christ, you get to experience resurrection and eternal life, but you also get to know the one who sent Him.

Jesus will say this later in John: 3 This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.

Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Jn 17:3.

Jesus wasn’t sent to get us to start keeping all the rules. He wasn’t just sent to modify our behavior. He was sent to bring us back to God. He was sent to restore a relationship that had been broken through our sin.

Don’t settle for an understanding of the gospel that simply gets you to heaven when you die. Open yourself up the greatest gift of the gospel, knowledge of God Himself.

Because Jesus was sent, you get to go where He goes after death. But you also get to know the one who sent Him. This is the greatest prize of the gospel. Not just a future eternal existence without pain, but a present existence with God as Father and friend.

Because Jesus was sent, you get to have the experience that millions of buddhists and hindus and muslims are seeking through religious adherence. You get to experience what millions of Jews are looking for in the synagogue each week. You get to experience what people around the world are seeking through mind altering substances. Because Jesus was sent, you get everything they’re after, and you get it any time, any place - You get God. And you get Him only through Jesus. Because Jesus was sent, At any moment, you can turn your heart towards him in prayer, and He comes running to you. This is the prize. This is the ultimate destination, not a place, but a person.

Does the fact that God sent Jesus shape your daily walk with God? You can pray, because the Father sent Son. You can overcome any doubt, because the Father sent the Son. You can worship, because the Father sent the Son. You can be full of joy no matter your circumstances, because the Father sent the Son. You can love that difficult person, and serve your spouse, and speak the gospel with boldness, because the Father sent the Son.

Christian Standard Bible Chapter 4

God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his one and only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 Love consists in this: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice, for our sins. 11 Dear friends, if God loved us in this way, we also must love one another

Rightly understood, the entire Christian life is a response. You aren’t waking up and trying to get God’s attention so that He will listen to you pray. You aren’t going to have to try and make God aware when you are afraid or in need. You aren’t fighting sin on your own and hoping you can impress him with how well you fight. The Father sent the Son.

He saw you in your hopeless and helpless condition, and initiated your rescue. And part of that rescue was the eternal, glorious, transcendent Son of God becoming imminent and close, submitting himself to the elements and the this broken world and to mockery and torture and crucifixion so that you could be where He is for all eternity.

That’s christianity. Not - do this, don’t do that, and hope your good deeds measure up in the end.

And when we are marked by that reality, as individuals and as a church, we will find this truth to be at work in us: The father and the Son are also sending us.