Did Jesus know what would happen to Him?

He Loved them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 1: “A love that knows…”

(John 13:1, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, August 23, 2009)

John 13:1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.

Before the Feast of the Passover

Jesus Christ is our Passover Lamb. Jews have been celebrating Passover for centuries. It is a wonderful holiday that helped God's people to remember that He had rescued them from slavery in Egypt. One of the Psalms that was sung by the Hebrews in connection with the Passover was Psalm 116. It starts like this: "I love the Lord, because He hears my pleading. / He's heeded me; through life I'll call on Him." This is a very appropriate song for Passover.

The way that God answered the pleading of Israel included some suffering for their nation. The rescue was not immediate. He demonstrated His great power in mighty plagues against Egypt, and even hardened Pharaoh's heart so that this king of Egypt stubbornly refused to let the Israelites go. Their deliverance came in connection with the final plague against the Egyptians. God had earlier turned the waters of the Nile into blood. He sent frogs, gnats, and flies. He killed their livestock, gave them boils, and sent down hail upon them. He covered them with locusts and then with darkness, but the final plague was by far the worst. God struck down all the firstborn of Egypt.

The way of rescue for the Israelites from this act of divine judgment was through the blood of the Passover lamb. This blood was placed above their doors, and the firstborn in each of those dwellings was spared. Why were God's people rescued through blood? The lamb was a sacrificial animal in this ceremony. The death that the firstborn of the Israelites deserved was symbolically taken by another, in this case, an animal. The message that God was displaying here in this great rescue of Israel out of Egypt was this: Freedom will come to the people of God through the death of a substitute. Now, in John 13:1, as the true Lamb of God, the eternal firstborn of the Father, prepares to be the real Substitute for sinners, He wants us to see His coming Passover sacrifice as a gift of true love.

Jesus knew

True love means the most when it is not accidental. Jesus is about to take upon himself the humble role of the lowest slave in the house. With his basin and towel, he will wash the feet of his disciples. That means so much more when we consider that Jesus did this as one who knew. He knew that something would soon take place, something that the foot washing symbolized. He would soon carry a cross on which He would die the death that we deserved. He knew that He would be the Passover Lamb through His death for us on that Roman cross.

This knowledge of Christ that makes the cross such an intentional act of divine love was not something that came upon the Son of God in the last week of life. Jesus, as the great Son of God, knew what He would do for us long before He was born. You and I did not know anything before we were conceived, since we were not anything up until that time. Jesus has always been the Son of God. He had an agreement with the Father even before the creation of the world. The Bible calls that agreement "the eternal covenant." An eternal covenant is an agreement that lasts forever. This covenant was secured with blood, and that blood was human, the blood of Jesus. In the opening words of 1 Peter, the apostle writes that the people who believe are "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood." To be elect is to be chosen by God. We are told in another place (Ephesians 1:4) that God did all this in eternity past, before the foundation of the world. God ordained the goal of the covenant, our salvation, and He ordained the way that this goal would be achieved, through the blood of the Lamb, Jesus Christ.

Jesus knew about this, and that is part of what makes His death for us such a powerful love. It was not accidental; it was not impulsive. Sometimes when we are trying to persuade other people that a decision we have made is not as last-minute or ill-considered as it may seem to them, we say something like this: "I've actually been thinking about this for a long time." Jesus actually had been thinking about his death for you for a long time, even from before the foundation of the world. His love was a settled commitment. He was not trapped into the cross. He knew.

Time to depart out of this world/ Time to go to the Father

This verse tells us about two specific things that Jesus knew as He was getting ready to wash the feet of His disciples. The first of these is that He knew that His hour had come to depart out of this world. There are many people as they are about to die who may have some kind of premonition that their time has come. This kind of hunch is pretty much just a guess. It may be a very good guess, but "man does not know his time" (Ecclesiastes 9:12). Jesus knew. His statement here was not a hunch. It was divine revelation. His death would take place in connection with this Passover only days away. He knew that He would suffer and die on a cross. He knew that His body would be buried, and that He would rise from the dead. He knew that He would be here on earth for a time in that resurrection body, but not for very long, since He knew that it was time for Him to depart out of this world.

The second thing that He knew was where He would be going when He departed out of this world. You may know, by faith, based on the promise God in His Word, where you will go when your time comes. I think that you can know that, and that God wants you to know that. Still, Jesus knew where He was going in a different way then you know where you are going. Recently I had an opportunity to return to the state where I was born. When I was considering going there, I was able to think about a place that I know. I grew up there. Jesus knew that when He left this world that He would be going to a place He knew very well, a place that is His home state. Jesus was going to the Father. The home state of the Father and the Son is in the present heaven. That is where Jesus lived as the Son of God for those millennia before He was born in Bethlehem. When He was born in a manger, He had left His home, and He had left the Father. He came here to do a job that only He could do. That required that He be set apart from the Father. The Father was home in heaven; Jesus came here. John 13:1 tells us that Jesus not only knew that the time had come for Him to depart the earth; He also knew that He would be going back home to the Father.

It is one of my joys that I have when I consider heaven that I expect to see my father there. I am not talking about God at the moment. I can only imagine what it would be like to see God, and to feel the embrace of Jesus Christ, but I know what it would be like to see the father I grew up with. I remember his bear hug, his physical embrace, his eyes, and his hands. Jesus knew what his home was like. He knew His Father's voice and His embrace. It would have to be with considerable joy that Jesus knew that it was time for Him to go back to the Father He loved.

He had loved His own

Maybe you have never adequately considered that the Father loved the Son, and the Son loved the Father. There may be a sense in which thinking about that kind of love within the Trinity is a revelation to you. I hope it is, yet it makes perfect sense that the glorious eternal Father and that the glorious eternal Son would love each other. What should be a far greater shock to all of us is that Jesus, the Son of God, loves people who are not yet glorious.

This verse tells us two things about the love of the Son of God for people. First we are told that Jesus had "loved his own who were in the world." Jesus loved His disciples. He sometimes had to tell them hard things, like when He said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan." He was at times rightly frustrated with them and with the crowds that were following Him, as when He said, "O faithless and twisted generation, how long am I to be with you? How long am I to bear with you?" What does it mean that Jesus had loved His own who were in the world? It means that He had suffered for them as an expression of His great covenant commitment to bring about their eternal blessing.

If you say that you love someone, but you are unwilling to suffer for that person, what does your love really mean? Love is willing to suffer. Jesus gave Himself to His disciples in an exhausting and frustrating schedule of travelling, teaching, healing, praying, and just being with them. It is no wonder when they were in a boat on stormy seas that He was the one sleeping somewhere. It was a sign of His trust in His Father, but also a sign that He was tired. Jesus faced opposition from powerful people because He loved His disciples, and He taught them hard lessons about who He was and what He had come to do, things they found it difficult to believe. He did all this because of His commitment of love to these men, 11 of 12 of whom would be the founding leaders of the Christian church.

He loved them to the end

These were not people from His home state, heaven, but He loved them anyway. The final point of the verse is that He loved them to the end. There are all kinds of people who say they love someone, but they will not love them to the end. They will not make the sacrifice necessary to keep on loving when love becomes too costly. In the case of most of us, loving someone to the end may mean something as simple as not walking away from them, and not throwing them out, and even that may be very difficult. In the case of Jesus, loving His disciples and us to the end meant shedding His blood. This is what He came to do. This is what He knew His life was all about. In this final moment of preparation for the days ahead, he gets down on his hands and feet like the lowest slave and washes their dusty toes; and that is nothing compared to what He will do for them soon when He is lifted up to die.

What can we say? “Thank You, Jesus! Thank You for knowing that the end was near, and loving us to the end!” If He had quit, He would not have been our Passover Lamb. If He had run away from the cross, we would still be stuck in the slavery of sin. He did not run away. He loved us to the end. The firstborn of God died that we might live.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What do we know about the Passover and how is this important for our understanding of divine love.

2. What did Jesus know about the events that were about to transpire on earth and in heaven?

3. How had Jesus displayed His love for His own up to this point?

4. What would it mean for Jesus to love us to the end?

What kind of faith is that?

The Hour Has Come – Three Sermons

Part 3: “An Hour of Death…”

(John 12:42-50, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, August 16, 2009)

John 12:42-50 42 Nevertheless, many even of the authorities believed in him, but for fear of the Pharisees they did not confess it, so that they would not be put out of the synagogue; 43 for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God. 44 And Jesus cried out and said, "Whoever believes in me, believes not in me but in him who sent me. 45 And whoever sees me sees him who sent me. 46 I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness. 47 If anyone hears my words and does not keep them, I do not judge him; for I did not come to judge the world but to save the world. 48 The one who rejects me and does not receive my words has a judge; the word that I have spoken will judge him on the last day. 49 For I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me has himself given me a commandment - what to say and what to speak. 50 And I know that his commandment is eternal life. What I say, therefore, I say as the Father has told me."

What is the Father’s commandment for the Son to speak and to accomplish?

A: “His commandment is eternal life.” (John 12:50)

The glory that men love (12:42-43)

In the twelfth chapter of John’s gospel, the public ministry of Jesus comes to an end as Jesus announces that His hour has come. In the next five chapters we have the details of our Lord’s closing words and actions privately with His disciples. The remaining chapters of the gospel tell us about Jesus’ arrest, trials, death, and His resurrection appearances. A turning point in the public ministry of our Lord came at the end of chapter six, when He said to a very large crowd, “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.” This statement was more than most people could take, and many stopped following Him at that point.

Despite this rejection of Christ, there still was a great crowd cheering Him on after the resurrection of Lazarus from the dead. We have seen that most were in darkness concerning the fact that that the Messiah would suffer and rise again. We have also seen John’s assessment that a wave of unbelief seemed to settle upon Jerusalem in the days before Jesus death. John quoted passages from Isaiah 53 and Isaiah 6 about the rejection of the Messiah and the unbelief of the people as God’s own judgment upon them. As Isaiah had written, “Who has believed our report?”

Nonetheless there were some, we are told, even among the rulers, who secretly did believe in Jesus. Yet they were not willing to make their belief in Him known to others. What kind of belief is that? This unwillingness to be honest about the things that they were thinking about in their hearts was because of a fear that they had. We know that Jesus had faced many pointed attacks from the Pharisees. This religious party had vehemently disagreed with Jesus concerning His understanding of the Law, and especially concerning His identity. They were a powerful force against Him and had a very strong influence among the leadership of the community synagogues. They had already agreed to use their power to exclude people from the synagogues who had confessed that Jesus was the Christ.

This was a very powerful weapon. The synagogue was the center of community religious life. It was in the synagogues that daily and weekly worship took place. To be excluded from the life of the synagogue was to be considered an irreligious sinner. For those whose whole lives were built around their religious connections, to be excluded from the synagogue was a very shameful thing. Because of this, these leaders who secretly believed in Jesus, probably including men like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, were unwillingly to publicly profess with their mouths that Jesus was the Messiah. In Romans 10, Paul says that saving faith is not simply a question of the secret belief of the heart, but also includes the confession of the lips. Some of the leaders had the first, but they were very cautious about the second.

The reason for their reluctance was obvious. They could not bear the shame and ridicule that would come upon them for making any secret belief of Jesus known to others. They loved the praise of men more than the praise of God. We need to remember the words of Jesus from Matthew 10:32-33, “Everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven, but whoever denies me before men, I also will deny before my Father who is in heaven.” Peter did that, denying Jesus, after the Lord’s arrest, and we are still persuaded that God had the power to turn that around, which He did.

The question of who believes in Jesus is not an easy one. Only one Man has every trusted God perfectly. The rest of us say, “I do believe; help my unbelief!” The glory that comes from men is temporary and sometimes insincere. There are many flatterers and opportunists who find it within their interest to throw lavish praise at everyone. The glory that comes from God is stable, beautiful, holy, and completely true. It is a resurrection glory, and it is worth any momentary affliction that might come with it in the present age.

Him who sent Me (12:44-45)

Who does someone believe in when they believe in Jesus? Jesus says to the people that He is sent from the Father. He has come as an Ambassador from heaven. This is at least part of what He came to do, but He is more than an ordinary prophet. That is why He said in an earlier passage, “I and the Father are one.” His claims are divine.

The rejection of any representative from God in the Old Testament was always a rejection of God who sent Him. This was the case with the towering Old Testament figure Samuel at the end of the era of the Judges. When the people demanded a king, God told Samuel, “They have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me.” Jesus’ special position as the eternal Son of God made this all the more striking. To reject Jesus is to reject the Father in person in a sense. To blindly ignore Jesus is to ignore God. To believe in Jesus is to believe in the Father. To see Jesus truly as the One uniquely sent by the Father is to see God.

Jesus cannot be just a good moral teacher, or just another prophet. Good moral teachers don’t say, “Whoever believes in me, believes in God.” They don’t say, “Whoever sees Me, sees God.” That is what Jesus is saying here. The One who sent Jesus, the one He calls “Father,” is God. Jesus did not just say these things. We are told that He yelled them out. As Paul says in Romans 9:5, Jesus is “God over all, blessed forever.” He walked into an hour of death as the only One who could somehow face our hell and turn it into eternal life.

Not to remain in darkness (12:46-50)

We have said that this hour was an hour of darkness. Jesus came into a world of darkness and suffered through this hour of darkness in order to secure an eternity of light for those who would believe in Him. We have also said that this hour was an hour of unbelief. Jesus came into a world of unbelief and suffered through this hour of unbelief in order to secure an eternity of resurrection glory that will be fully seen by those who believe in Him. This hour of darkness, this hour of unbelief, was above all things an hour of death. Jesus came into a world of death and suffered death in order to secure an eternity of life for those who would believe in Him.

Jesus of Nazareth did not give His own message as just another man with an opinion. He gave the message of the Father; the message of God. That message came to Him as a commandment that He was willing to keep. The commandment was a mission. “Secure eternal life for my people, for Jews and Gentiles.” This mission required great sacrifice. The hour had now come for that sacrifice. It was an hour of death, and Jesus walked right into it, knowing that it was an hour of death. This was the path that He chose in obedience to the Father’s commandment of eternal life for you. To win eternal life He had to say “Yes” to the worst hour of all time.

To be a Christian is to follow this Man on the pathway of eternal life that He blazed for us. It is your privilege to follow Him into a dark hour, an hour of unbelief, even an hour of death. In that hour He said what the Father gave Him to say, and He did what the Father gave Him to do. All this took the greatest integrity. He did not come to judge the world, but to save the world. Has He saved you? He is not trying to judge anyone. Those who will not believe in Him will have the word of His mercy standing against them on the last day, because they decided to fight against the mercy of God for some reason. They decided to reject Jesus. I don’t know why. He never did anything to hurt them. He was willing to be hurt for them, and they just decided to keep their distance from Him for some reason. In rejecting the love of the Son they rejected the love of the Father who sent Him for them (see Luke 15).

For those who have wandered for some reason into darkness: Do not stay there. Do not remain in darkness. Jesus is calling you here today. Jesus is alive. He knows you, and He can bring you home again to Him. You know what kind of life He has called you to. Receive His Word as a word for you. Profess with your lips that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, and you will be saved. That’s what the Bible says to do, and I don’t know why anyone should object to that. It is a proposal of love. Receive it, and embrace Jesus.

For those who have belief but not the kind that would every cost them anything real: Do not believe one thing in your heart, say a second thing with your mouth, and do a third thing with your life. That does not lead to anything but confusion. Rediscover the heart of God in Jesus Christ. What man could say what He shouts? “Whoever believes in me, believes in God. Whoever sees me sees God. I am the Light of the world. Hear My word, and keep My word, or My word will come against you in the day of God’s judgment. I came to save the world. I am doing what God told Me to do. I am saying what God told Me to say. His commandment is eternal life.”

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. How can someone believe, but then not confess and live out their faith?

2. What is faith in Christ, and how does it relate to faith in the Father?

3. Why did Christ come to earth? How does His coming relate to the biblical concepts of judgment and salvation?

4. What is the connection between what Jesus says and what He does?

More powerful than unbelief...

The Hour Has Come – Three Sermons

Part 2: “An Hour of Unbelief…”

(John 12:37-41, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, August 9, 2009)

John 12:37-41 37 Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in him, 38 so that the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled: "Lord, who has believed what he heard from us, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?" 39 Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, 40 "He has blinded their eyes and hardened their heart, lest they see with their eyes, and understand with their heart, and turn, and I would heal them." 41 Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him.

Could it be that an Old Testament prophet saw the Son of God?

A: “Isaiah saw his glory and spoke of him.” (John 12:41)

The hour…

In John 12:23, Jesus says, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” The decisive hour has come for Jesus Christ. It is also the decisive hour for God’s entire work of salvation. The story of that final hour continues for several chapters in John’s gospel. We are trying to understand what kind of hour it was. We have seen that it was an hour of darkness, meaning a day of ignorance concerning the true plan of God. Even among those who agreed that Jesus was the Messiah King of Israel, there was an overwhelming ignorance of the suffering that the Christ would face to be our King. That betrayed a tremendous ignorance of the Scriptures and of the things that Jesus had taught His disciples. Yet that hour of darkness would eventually have to give way to an eternity of light.

Despite the signs… (12:37)

Not only was this hour an hour of darkness or ignorance. It was also an hour of unbelief. Unbelief goes beyond ignorance. Unbelief knows, and still rejects the Word of God and the signs of the Messiah. Unbelief is a sad fact in the lives of many people.

We often imagine that belief is just a matter of clear evidence clearly presented; that the weight of evidence offered up by a competent communicator will overwhelm the objections of a person that has up to this point rejected the person and message of Jesus Christ. That is not the case. Jesus Himself says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father draws Him” (John 6:44), and again “No one can come to Me unless it is granted him by the Father” (John 6:65). Paul says that faith is a gift from God, “so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:9).

This teaching of the supremacy of God in the gift of belief and the work of conversion is actually deeply offensive to the proud heart. We want to cling to the false doctrine that we are the key figures in any decision to believe, and we too easily reject a God as unworthy who insists that “in love He predestined us” (Ephesians 1:4-5). At root, this rejection of electing love is a determination to place ourselves above God, as a moral judge over Him. The Scripture teaches that God is sovereign in salvation. We don’t necessarily like that, and we imagine that our dislike of a doctrine is more important than whether the doctrine is clearly taught in the Bible. In this way we place our private limited judgment at the very top of the pyramid of our belief system. We will not believe in a god who offends our sensibilities or whose way are impossible for us to comprehend, even if He is the God of the Scriptures.

The fact is that God’s sovereignty in salvation is absolutely necessary. There is no amount of evidence that has its own inherent power to break the back of unbelief. Only God can make us willing to believe Him on His terms, and thus to surrender to Him, morally, intellectually, and spiritually. We somehow imagine our private interpretation as the beginning of all things. It is not. The facts and words of God must be above us. Our opinions, inclinations, and sensory observations must bow before the Word.

Even with miraculous signs, no number of signs and no magnitude of any one sign that Jesus could have performed would have been enough to make people believe in Him. He had already performed very many signs. Each of them should have been persuasive. The six public signs recorded so far in John’s gospel were increasingly weighty, culminating in the calling of Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb. We are told in John 20:31 that these six signs and the final seventh sign of the resurrection of Christ Himself were written that we might believe. Yet it is the power of God alone that can grant the supernatural gift of faith. Only that divine gift enables a person to receive the obvious fact of any sign. There was nothing lacking in Jesus’ signs. But many did not yet have faith.

A rejected Messiah (12:38)

There is always unbelief among people, but there is more here. This hour of the generation of Jesus’ ministry and of His last week prior to the cross was an hour of particular unbelief. This is communicated to us by John through the quotation of the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. Looking forward to the coming day of the death of the Messiah hundreds of years after his own day of difficulty, Isaiah writes of the day of Jesus. He says, in the words of Isaiah 53:1-3,

Who has believed what they heard from us? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Shortly after the resurrection, when the Spirit was poured out upon the church in Jerusalem, there would be an unusual moment, not of unbelief, but of belief. Thousands would embrace the message of Jesus as Messiah. This movement of belief would spread throughout the Mediterranean world. We read about it in Acts. That day is not the day of John 12, and it is not the day that Isaiah wrote about in Isaiah 53:1-3. That day was a day of special unbelief. In the days just prior to the death of our Lord, it seemed like almost no one believed in the cross. Almost everyone who heard the plain story of a Savior who would atone for sin by His own death rejected the message and put it aside. Furthermore, no one at all seemed to believe in the swift resurrection of Jesus from the dead, though He had told them that He would rise in three days. Even the women going to anoint the body of Jesus on that Sunday morning were only expecting to find His dead body in the grave.

Jesus was despised and rejected by men, and so was His true message of His own death and resurrection as the end of the Old Covenant age of the Law and the beginning of the resurrection age. Particularly in the last days of His life, despite the great signs that He had performed and the crowds that were keenly interested in what He was doing, a wave of foul unbelief spread over Jerusalem. Suddenly people would want to hide their faces from His exposed and brutalized body, and it would be an undeniable and surprising fact that people would not esteem Him as worthy. Remember that those who wanted to kill Jesus thought for sure that they had to capture Him away from the view of the crowds, for they were sure that the people would come to His defense. They need not have concerned themselves. He was a rejected Messiah, and His critical hour was an hour of striking unbelief.

The ministry of a rejected servant (12:39-40)

Where did this come from, this unusual hour of unbelief? The answer is hard to fathom, bringing us back to the teaching of the Scriptures that God is sovereign in the granting of faith. John quotes again from the prophet Isaiah, this time from Isaiah 6, when God was calling the prophet to a ministry that would largely be rejected.

Isaiah 6:8-13 8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, "Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?" Then I said, "Here am I! Send me." 9 And he said, "Go, and say to this people: "' Keep on hearing,1 but do not understand; keep on seeing,2 but do not perceive.' 10 Make the heart of this people dull,1 and their ears heavy, and blind their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their hearts, and turn and be healed." 11 Then I said, "How long, O Lord?" And he said: "Until cities lie waste without inhabitant, and houses without people, and the land is a desolate waste, 12 and the LORD removes people far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land. 13 And though a tenth remain in it, it will be burned again, like a terebinth or an oak, whose stump remains when it is felled." The holy seed is its stump.

This was a word for Isaiah’s own rejected ministry coming toward the end of an era, as Judah would soon be sent into exile, but it was also a vision for a later day when the entire Old Covenant would come to an end in the cross of the final Prophet, Jesus. God would blind their eyes and harden their hearts, because the Lord had determined not to heal Old Testament Israel as Old Testament Israel. He had a better plan that required that a Day of Judgment come upon them in their temporary rejection of the Jewish Messiah. It was His sovereign will to bring that day of unbelief, just as it was His sovereign will that Jesus His Son would die for us. It was not that God delighted in unbelief any more than He delighted in the suffering of His Son. It was a critical and necessary component in His greater work of salvation. It is not for us to judge Him on this point, but to receive His Word, and to wonder at His greatness and the glory of His coming kingdom that would justify the decree of an hour of such unbelief.

Isaiah saw (12:41)

We are also given some indication by the Apostle Paul that the end of the gospel age will come with a great hour of apostasy and unbelief. We see throughout the history of the church that God’s distribution of the grace of faith comes in surprising movements of faith that seem to come for a season and then go. How does God sustain His people during an hour when unbelief seems to be everywhere? John directs us again to Isaiah. (Read the earlier verses in Isaiah 6.) He tells us that when Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up in the heavenly sanctuary, he actually saw Jesus, the eternal Son of God, and he was strengthened for what was a difficult life. We need to see the Lord today with the eyes of faith as we read and believe the Word of God. Do what Isaiah did in an hour of unbelief. See Jesus in His heavenly glory, speak of Him, and live for Him. (Read Jude 17-25.)

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What was the reaction of the people to the signs that Jesus did?

2. In what sense could it be said that a rejected Messiah could have been anticipated?

3. What was God doing with the Old Covenant and New Covenant through Jesus?

4. What did Isaiah see, and how does that relate to Jesus?