Let’s pray. O Lord, we have just sung these powerful words that You will hold us fast, and so we say once again we believe, help our unbelief. We know You well, and yet some of us very poignantly this morning feel as if we are falling, or those we know are wandering away, and we wonder how we will endure for another week, and so we pray that You would hold us fast. We thank You, Lord, for your promises, all of which are yes and amen in Christ Jesus. We praise You for creating the heavens and the earth by Your Word, for speaking new life by Your Word, and we pray now that into the heart of every longtime Christian here and into the heart of every new believer and into the heart of everyone far from You, whether they know it or not, into the heart of the stubbornly disbelieving, You would speak, and we might see the glory of Jesus. We pray in His name. Amen.

We come this morning in John’s Gospel to chapter 12, verse 37. Actually you see the break there, the section break, the second half of verse 36 through verse 43. The plan is to do this week and then one more week in John, finishing up John 12, which will be a good stopping point, and then to spend the morning for the fall with studies in the books of Acts, which will be, I think, illustrative and instructive for us as we seek to understand the Lord’s mission and vision for us here at Christ Covenant.

But this morning, John chapter 12.

“When Jesus had said these things, He departed and hid Himself from them. Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him, 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?’ Therefore they could not believe. For again Isaiah said, ‘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.’ Isaiah said these things because he saw His glory and spoke of Him. 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; for they loved the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.”

John’s Gospel can be divided into two halves. You have sometimes called a Book of Signs, in chapters 1 through 12, and then in chapters 13 through 21, the Book of Glory. The Book of Signs where Jesus does these enumerated signs, miracles, and then the Book of Glory which focuses mainly on His passion week. Sometimes the book is divided into His public ministry, prologue, chapter 1, public ministry 2 through 12, and then turning in 13 and following His private ministry, taken up with the upper room discourse and the high priestly prayer. However you divide the two halves, Book of Signs, Book of Glory, public ministry, private ministry, in either case, chapter 12 is a turning point. The signs are done, the ministry is turning now privately to the disciples. We have entered into the last week of Jesus’ life, and He will turn His attention to final instructions for His followers and then ultimately setting His face like a flint to Jerusalem and to the cross.

This last section of chapter 12 deals with the question that has popped up throughout Jesus’ public ministry, namely why such unbelief. You can see it in verse 37: “Though He had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe in Him.”

Remember, John’s Gospel was written for either those seeking Christianity or perhaps very new Christians or an apologetic for Christianity, and they would have been familiar with many, many, many who had rejected Christ and the church was just very small, struggling to hang on in those first centuries, and first decades in particular.