WHY DIDN’T PEOPLE BELIEVE JESUS?
John 8:45-59
Morning Meditation 2/9/2013
This mediation will take us beyond my ability to detail these verses. It is just too much territory. But I list the verses for your private study. There are some truths in the passage that I will draw your attention to as it relates to the blindness of the Jews to embrace Jesus as the Messiah.
Jesus states a truth in verse 45 that is an indictment against the willful rejection of information that contradicts what we want to hear. I don’t know if you know it or not, but we come here with our minds pretty well made up. We don’t like to hear things that conflict with our brilliant preconceived ideas. Jesus said in John 8:45, “And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” Of course he had just broadsided them with the statement: “Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not” (vs 44). It is hard for those who consider themselves to be champions of the truth to receive this as truth.
What Jesus told them was the truth. But who wants to find out that his father is the devil? Satan is the god of this world (2Cor 4:3-4) and the prince of the power of the air that works in the children of disobedience (Eph. 2:2). He told them the truth. But they would have insisted that they were the children of God. They claimed Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as their fathers and were sons of the Law, the chosen race of God with the promises of the covenants. Now for someone to come along and tell them that God was not their father, being decedents of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and claiming to be under the law of Moses did not make them children of God, simply was a little too much for them. (Some Baptists are just as bad).
Jesus said, “And because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not.” You see they were having problems recognizing the truth.
What should they have done? First, they should have looked him over really good. He invited them to do this in the words: “Which of you convinceth me of sin?” I’ll tell you one thing. I wouldn’t have invited the crowd he spoke to to do this? Do you remember Mr. Hart from Colorado inviting the press to follow him and catch him in adultery. They took him up on his invitation. They caught him within a very short time and it put him out of the race for the presidency. I don’t want to disappoint you. But none of us can stand too close an inspection. I’m talking about letting the experts (the Pharisees) take a look at us through the telescope of the Law of Moses. This is what Jesus invited them to do. These experts couldn’t find a thing. Jesus the eternal Son was without spot before the throne of God.
When you have a completely righteous man talking, it pays to listen. This is what they had in Jesus. The reason Jesus says they will not hear him is found in the word “because.” The word “because” always answers the question “why.” They did not want the truth. They thought they had it, and any information that came to them that contradicted what they had already accepted as truth, became a lie to them. They were so strong in this assumption that they were willing to risk their eternal destinies on this. Jesus said to them in John 8:21 and 24: “Then said Jesus again unto them, I go my way, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your sins: whither I go, ye cannot come. I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe not that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.” These verses reveal that what Jesus was telling them had to do with destiny. It was not disagreeing on a minor point.
Now if they can’t come to where he is going, and if where he is going is to heaven, then the only conclusion left is that they are going to hell. Now my grammar and spell checkers don’t like that word. I used it yesterday and it told me, “consider revising to avoid this word.” Now I am confused. I don’t know if my grammar checker doesn’t believe in hell which would make it a liberal, or, if it has such high moral standards that it objects to the word on the grounds that it thinks I am cussing! Jesus told Nicodemus “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (John 3:3).
Then Jesus makes another important statement: “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8:47). This is a very offensive principle that still offends and will classify you as a cult to the intellectually elite. Jesus is saying that you do not understand because you are not saved. You do not have the nature of God in you that gives you the capacity to understand spiritual truths.
Is this still true today? Did the apostles teach that this same principle continued throughout the age? Let’s see. ! Cor. 2:14-15 says, “But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.” John said in 1 John 4:6 “We are of God: he that knoweth God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us. Hereby know we the spirit of truth, and the spirit of error.”
People did not believe in Jesus because they were very religious but unsaved people who did not have the capacity to hear. They could have gotten the capacity because Jesus came to give them that capacity. He told them in John 10:10: “The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.” Jesus came to give eternal life to believers. But they refused to believe on him. Jesus said, “And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?”
Jesus is still saying the truth today through his people. The Word of God is out there. It comes to people in the form of the printed Word. Most people own a Bible. It comes in the form of gospel tracts. It comes in the form of missionaries. It comes in the form of individual Christians witnessing to others. It comes in the form of gospel preaching radio and T.V. God has a lot of ways of getting the message out. But it is still not believed by the majority of people. And the reasons have not changed. It is a deliberate rejection of God’s word because of pre conceived ideas and a rejection of the messenger. They do not believe that Jesus is who he claimed to be therefore they do not believe what he says.
