Dr. Sproul points out in this section that John's parenthetical comment that "even His brothers did not believe Him" shows that living with Jesus, they had not come to faith yet. This text obviously mitigates against the perpetual virginity of Mary. We find out that His brothers were looking for a secular deliverer. We are confronted today with the prosperity gospel, "name it and claim it" faith that treats Jesus as a magician, when all He guaranteed forgiveness, reconciliation, and eternal life.

Our Scripture this morning is from John 7:1–13. Hear now the Word of God:

After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brothers therefore said to Him, “Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world.” For even His brothers did not believe in Him.

Then Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil. You go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come.” When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee.

But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, “Where is He?” And there was much complaining among the people concerning Him. Some said, “He is good”; others said, “No, on the contrary, He deceives the people.” However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.

He who has ears to hear the Word of God, let him hear it. Let us pray.

Father, condescend to our weakness by the help of Your Holy Spirit, who inspired this text in the first place, that we may be gripped by the revelation contained within it. We ask it in Your name. Amen.

Jesus’ Brothers

It seems like every Saturday night, I say to Vesta: “You might as well be prepared. I don’t have a good sermon prepared for tomorrow morning.” She says, “You always say that,” and I say, “I always feel that way.” One of the principles I teach in seminary to students who are learning how preach is this: “When you come to the text of Scripture, before you decide what to preach, look for the drama, because in every passage of the Bible that God the Holy Spirit inspires, there is drama.”

I have to confess, I struggled with the text this morning, searching for the drama. It seems almost like a travel log about where Jesus was going, whether He was going to be in Galilee, or whether He was going down to Judea for the feast, and so on. But as I thought about and read about this text, I found it to be one of the most troubling texts that I have ever found in the New Testament because of one small phrase contained within it. That phrase is a parenthetical comment added to the narrative by John in verse 5: “For even His brothers did not believe in Him.”

I want to think briefly with you about this comment in the Word of God. At this juncture in the ministry of our Lord, it was not just that many of His disciples departed from Him and walked with Him no more after the Bread of Life discourse. Now we are told that even His brothers, at this point, were unbelievers.

Historically, some have argued that Mary was perpetually a virgin, that she only had one son, Jesus, and had no more children after Him. But the text clearly teaches, here and elsewhere, that Jesus had younger brothers—one of the most important of whom was James the Just, the author of the epistle of James in the New Testament. In his testimony, we discover that James did not become a Christian, a believer in His older brother, until after he was an eyewitness to his brother’s resurrection.

False Trust

It would have been an amazing thing to grow up in the home of Jesus and follow His earthly ministry up to this point. Even though it is only the seventh chapter of John’s gospel, we are approaching the end Jesus’ life. I told you when we started this study of John that two-thirds of the book is devoted to the last week of Jesus’ life. Jesus is already approaching the cross, and still, members of His own family are not believers.

But when we read the beginning of this text, it seems like they are believers. Listen again to what it says: “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee.” He did not want to walk in Judea. He knew that the Jews in the Southern Kingdom of Judea and there in Jerusalem were plotting to kill Him, and so He was staying up north, in Galilee. But it was time for the Jewish Feast of the Tabernacles, and that required all Jews from all parts of the nation to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem to celebrate. It was Jesus’ responsibility under the law to come to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Tabernacles.

The brothers of Jesus came to Him and said, essentially, “Let’s leave now.” They said: “Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples”—that is, your disciples down in Judea—“also may see the works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly.”

The brothers are the self-appointed managers of Jesus’ political campaign. They are saying, in essence: “You’re never going to get anywhere in Galilee. If you want to be king, if you want to be the Messiah, You’re going to have to go down to Jerusalem and do Your stuff there and not hide Your lamp under a bushel. You want a public ministry? You want public acclamation? Then You can’t operate in the obscurity of Galilee. You must go to the public headquarters in Jerusalem.”

Does this not remind you of what happened on the occasion of Jesus’ first miracle, at the wedding feast of Cana? In the midst of the embarrassment of the host, Jesus’ own mother came to Him and said: “Do something. The steward’s embarrassed. Go do Your stuff.” Jesus rebuked His mother: “Woman, what does your concern have to do with Me? My hour has not yet come” (John 2:4). No sooner did He rebuke her than He went and performed the miracle that saved the host from embarrassment.

The same kind of thing happens here. He tells the disciples, in essence: “I’ll determine when I come to Jerusalem. You all run ahead. My hour has not yet come. Your hour is here every minute. The world doesn’t hate you; they can’t hate you. But they hate Me, because I bear witness to their evil.”

Jesus implies that He is not coming, but no sooner do they leave than we read in verse 10, “But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.” All the buzzing takes place. The people come around, and they say: “Where is He? Is He hiding? Is He a good man? Is He a devious man?” They were afraid to speak openly for fear they would get in trouble.

But I want us to come back to this verse. Even though the brothers of Jesus are imploring and counseling Him to go down to Jerusalem, that He might make Himself known there, they are not even believers. They are doing the same thing the other disciples and the rest of the multitudes had done. The brothers are following Jesus for the bread that He provides and for the hope they have in their hearts that He will deliver them from the oppressive yoke of Roman bondage. Their understanding of His mission is completely distorted. They do not know who Jesus is, and the trust they have in Him is a false trust. They do not believe in Him in a saving way, because their expectations of Jesus are not at all what He was about.

Here is why I say this text is troubling: These were people who were with Jesus during His earthly ministry, watching Him day after day. They were His blood brothers. They thought they knew Him. They thought they were on His team. They were rooting for Him to go to Jerusalem to manifest His power, but they were still unbelievers, outside the kingdom of God.

All About the Real Jesus

People sometimes come to me and ask urgent, visceral questions about the state of their souls. They say to me: “R.C., how can I know that I am saved? How can I know that my faith, my profession of faith, is genuine?” I ask them three simple questions, starting here: “Do you love Christ perfectly?” They always say no, because if they did, they would not sin at all.

I then ask, “Do you love Christ as much as you ought to love Him?” If the answer to the first question is no, the answer to the second question has to also be no, because we ought to love Him perfectly. Now, they are getting nervous. I say: “Now here’s the third question, the most important question: Do you love Him at all?” Usually, they will say: “Yes, I do. I have some affection for Christ.”

I answer: “That’s wonderful. But remember that in your natural state, in your fallen human condition, you have no capacity whatsoever in the flesh to have affection for Jesus. If you have any real affection in your heart for Jesus, that’s proof positive that you are a converted person. So, you can enjoy the assurance of your salvation, but with one major warning. When I ask you, ‘Do you love Jesus at all,’ I have to add this qualifier: ‘Do you love the biblical Christ?’”

I remember in graduate school, a very important theological work was issued by a radical critical theologian, and it was titled, Jesus Means Freedom. This theologian was saying that we cannot know anything about the historical Jesus. He may not even have existed, for all we know. But the name Jesus has become a symbol of human liberation from any form of oppression. So, according to him, if you believe in the liberation of people from political oppression, then you believe in Jesus.

We saw this in the nineteenth century, when the nineteenth-century liberals transformed Jesus into merely an ethical teacher. If asked, “Do you believe in Jesus?” they would say, “Yes, I believe Jesus was a great moral teacher.” With the advent of existential theology, they would say: “Yes, I believe in Jesus. Jesus is a great existential example.” But the mere ethical Jesus, the Jesus who is the symbol of liberation, and the Jesus who is the existential paradigm—none of those are the real Jesus.

If you had asked Jesus’ brothers, “Do you believe in your brother?” they would have said: “Of course. We just can’t get Him to go to Jerusalem and do His stuff and go public.” But the Word of God says they were unbelievers. That is why we have to ask ourselves this question all the time: “Is the Jesus I believe in the real Jesus?”

You know how important I think doctrine, truth, and the biblical ethic are. All those things are important, but at the bottom line, Christianity is all about Jesus. It is all about Jesus, and the reason I am standing here this morning is Jesus. The reason you are here this morning is Jesus.

We must have an understanding of the real Jesus, the Jesus who cloaks His glory in humiliation, the Jesus who exchanges the glory He had in the beginning with the Father for humiliation and the disgrace of the cross, the Jesus who is despised and rejected by men. What kind of expectations do you come to Jesus with?

This morning, He has spread His table for us, and I am confident that we are about to meet the real Jesus. It is the real Jesus who promises to be really with us in the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Whatever other ideas of Jesus you have had in the past, if they do not correspond to the biblical portrait of Jesus, lay them aside. Come to this table and meet the real Jesus, because the real Jesus will give you real forgiveness if you come with a broken and contrite heart.

Jesus Will Not Disappoint

That is what we need: We need the real Jesus. Anything less than the real Jesus will leave us disappointed. I can say this before God and before you as witnesses: In my whole life, Jesus has never disappointed me. I have never met a human being who has not disappointed me, but never has Jesus disappointed me. We disappoint Him when we bring expectations to Him that are not part of His agenda. We become just like His unbelieving brothers, who only looked to Him for what they could get, for worldly power and success.

The other day, I heard a preacher talking about the prosperity gospel, the “name it and claim it.” “Blab it and grab it,” he called it. You bring your expectations, and like magic, Jesus gives those desires to you. No, the only thing I can guarantee He will give you is forgiveness—redemption, reconciliation with the Father, and eternal life. If that is not enough, I cannot imagine what else you could ask for.

I remind you, on the night in which our Lord was betrayed, He met with His disciples in the upper room that had been prepared for Him. He took bread, and when He had blessed it, He broke it, saying, “This is My body, broken for you.” After they had eaten, He took the cup, and He said, “Now this is the cup of the new covenant, my blood, which is shed for the remission of your sins. Drink ye all of it.”

In Jesus’ name, I invite every single person here who is a true Christian, who has examined themselves, who is not under the discipline of an evangelical church, who comes not in pride but in a spirit of humility, to come to this table to visit Him. He is here. If this were a symbol only, a memorial only, an empty and nude sign, then as far as I am concerned, it would be a Herculean waste of our time to attend this table.

We come here not only to remember Him, not only to honor Him, but we come to meet Him in His resurrected power and glory. So, I bid you come, for He will descend from heaven to meet you. Let us pray.

Our Father and our God, we pray that our faith may stand the trial of fire, that our faith may indeed be a pure trust in the real Christ, who really has redeemed us. Prepare us now to feast upon Him. For we ask it in His name. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.