92
John 12:36-41  THE REJECTION OF JESUS BY THE COMMON
PEOPLE

Introduction:
	
	The vast crowds who had gathered at Jerusalem for the
Jewish Passover were on the verge of believing in Jesus
Christ as the Savior.  They had already reached the stage
where they were willing to accept Him as the Christ
providing that meant only that they would accept Him as a
king who would deliver them from Roman rule.  But they had
not yet reached the stage where they would be willing to
accept Him as the Christ who would redeem them from their
sin.

I.  The point when the Jewish common people began to turn
	against Jesus

	Then when Jesus announced to them that He was going to
be crucified, they changed their minds altogether about the
possibility of Him being the Christ.  They decided that
since the Old Testament scriptures teach that the Christ
will live forever, and since Jesus Himself said that He was
about to be crucified that He could not possibly be the
Christ.  Old Testament scriptures declare that the Christ
would be a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek and
that He would be a king forever ruling from the throne of
David.  Therefore they could not understand how Jesus could
claim to be the Christ, who would live forever, if He were
going to be crucified.
	So the masses of Jewish common people made a sudden turn
in their attitude toward Jesus.  They suddenly rejected the
idea that Jesus is the Christ and that He should be crowned
as king of Israel.  They turned thumbs down on the whole
idea.
	At least they used this question about which appeared to
them as a conflict with Old Testament scripture as an excuse
for rejecting Him.  I strongly suspect that the real
underlying reason was because they did not want a Christ who
would save them from their sins.  They liked their sins.
They got pleasure from their sins.  They had no desire to
repent of their sins and change their way of living.  They
would like a Savior with the miraculous powers which they
knew Jesus to have who would use His powers to free them
from the Roman government and who would cause their nation
to prosper materially, but they did not want a Savior who
would require them to seek forgiveness of their sins and
they did not want a Savior who would call on them to give up
their sinful way of living.
	Furthermore they did not like the idea of having to
place their faith in a Christ to get to heaven.  They had
been taught all their lives that if they would keep the law
of Moses that they would spend eternity in heaven.  They
were perfectly satisfied with that plan of salvation and
they were perfectly satisfied that they would make it to
heaven by the law.  They could see no reason whatsoever to
give up on the idea of going to heaven by their own works
and trusting the works of someone else to save their souls
and take them to heaven.
	At any rate, whatever their real motive may have been,
they did use the matter about the Christ living forever as
an excuse for deciding that Jesus could not be the Christ
whom the Old Testament prophets had promised.

II.  THE CLOSE OF THE PUBLIC MINISTRY OF JESUS

	Jesus made one last strong appeal to them to the common
people for them to believe in the Light and be saved while
He was still with them.  V.  36, "While ye have light,
believe in the light, that ye may be the children of
light..."  It is very likely that some few of them did trust
Him and get saved as a result of this appeal.  However, the
vast majority of them refused to do so.  Instead, the
majority made up their minds that the Jewish leaders were
right about Jesus.  They decided that there was no way that
He could be the Christ.
	This was a drastic change in the thinking of the
majority of the people about Jesus.  Prior to this, even
though they had not accepted Him as Savior, they had been
willing to accept Him as their king.
	Jesus Himself, likewise, made a drastic change toward
the common people.  (V.36), "...These things spake Jesus,
and departed, and did hide himself from them."  Jesus left
the temple and did not return.  John said that He went into
hiding so that neither the Jewish leaders nor the Jewish
common people knew were He was.
	John does not tell us where Jesus went, but we do know
that prior to this time, He had been staying every night out
in Bethany and going to the temple every day during the
daylight hours.  Evidence in Scripture indicates that He now
went to Bethany and spent what little time He had left with
His disciples.  He would not appear again voluntarily in
public.  His public ministry was now over.  Later He would
be arrested and carried as a prisoner to Jerusalem and then
publicly crucified, but His public preaching and teaching
ministry was now over.  He would use what little time He had
left to teach His disciples and seek to strengthen them and
get them ready for His crucifixion.

III.  THE UNBELIEF OF THE PEOPLE TO JESUS COMPARED TO THE
	UNBELIEF OF THE PEOPLE TO ISAIAH IN HIS DAY

	Even thought the public ministry of Jesus was now over,
John, the writer of the book now, by inspiration of the Holy
Spirit, gives us a brief review of the ministry of Jesus in
an attempt to help us understand just how the Jewish people
have reacted to the ministry of Jesus.
	John first points out that the Jews, as a whole, have
now rejected Jesus as the Christ.  This was in spite of the
fact that the many miracles He had done prove beyond any
reasonable doubt that He is the Christ.  V. 37, "But though
he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed
not on him."  The masses of common people in Israel are now
beyond reason.  Most of them have now made up their minds
that Jesus is not the Christ and no amount of reasoning will
persuade them.
	There are some of them, of course, who had already truly
accepted Him as the Christ and had trusted Him as Savior.
In fact, by number the gospel writers say there were many
who had already been saved.  But in comparison to the great
numbers who had not been saved, there were relatively few
who had trusted Him as the Christ.  Even yet some few of
them would later be saved under the preaching of the
apostles, but still relatively few in comparison to the
	majority.  John compares this reaction of the people to
Jesus to an earlier reaction of the people to the ministry
of the Prophet Isaiah.  Just as most of the Jews rejected
the ministry of Jesus, most of the Jews in Isaiah's day had
rejected his ministry.
	V. 38, "That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be
fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our
report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed?"
Isaiah had been called of God to deliver His message to the
people of Israel.  Isaiah lived in a day when sin was
rampant in the land.  God sent him to the people to call
them to repent of their sins and to get their lives
straightened up with God.
	In order to convince Isaiah that He would be with Isaiah
in his ministry, God showed Isaiah a vision of Himself in
His glory high and lifted up in heaven.  Therefore, Isaiah
and other prophets of his day went and preached the message
which God had instructed them to deliver to the people.
	But the people did not respond favorably to their
message.  The people refused to believe the prophets, they
refused to repent of their sins and they refused to change
their ways.
	Isaiah and his fellow prophets were greatly let down.
They went to God and poured out their hearts to God.  Let me
paraphrase what they said.  They said, "Oh God, we have gone
to the people and delivered the message which you told us to
deliver.  But we could not get the people to believe what we
had to say.  Very, very few would even believe that you had
sent us.  And very few would accept the message which we had
to deliver."
	John explained why the people would not believe Isaiah
and the prophets.  V.  39-40, "Therefore they could not
believe, because that Esaias said again, He hath blinded
their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not
see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be
converted, and I should heal them."
	This statement is very difficult to understand.  At
first they seem to be saying that God had sent Isaiah and
the other prophets with a message and that God had hardened
the hearts of the people so that the people could not
believe what the prophets said.  That, however, is not at
all what the verse is saying.  There is more involved than
that.
	What happened was this.  God really wanted these people
to repent.  God sent His prophets to the people telling them
to repent.  The people, however, were not willing to repent
and wanted some other kind of message from God's prophets.
Yet God refused to give them a different kind of message.
God would not change His message to suit the fancy of the
people and He called upon His prophets to continue
delivering the message of repentance.  But every time the
people heard the prophets preach the same old message of
repentance, the people hardened their hearts against that
message.  Therefore, the more God sent the message of
repentance to the people, the harder their hearts became.
It was only by God's insistence that the people repent that
God hardened their hearts.  God wanted them to repent.  He
never deliberately did anything to hinder them from
repenting.  But His message did have that the effect of
hardening the hearts of the people to the point that they
could not believe the prophets.  It boils down to this.
They could not believe because they would not believe.
	This is what has taken place in our text with the Jewish
people and Jesus.  Jesus began His ministry with a message
of repentance.  Like John the Baptist, He preached the
necessity of repentance.  He also preached the necessity of
the sinner trusting in Him in order to be saved.  He said,
"I am the door:  by me if any may enter in, he shall be
saved."  He said, "He that believeth on me hath everlasting
life; he that believeth not shall not see life."
	When the people let it be known that they did not like
the message of Jesus and that they preferred a message that
would allow them to earn their way to heaven by their good
works, Jesus just got stronger with His message.  He said,
"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish."  He said,
"I am the way, the truth and the life, no man cometh unto
the Father but by me."  In other words, Jesus said, "No man
will ever get to heaven unless I save him."  Jesus never let
up.  He never compromised.  He always insisted that He is
the One and only Savior of men.
	What God the Father wanted was for the people to repent
of their sins and trust in Jesus and be saved.  What Jesus
wanted was for the people to repent of their sins and trust
in Him and be saved.  But by His continued insistence that
this is the only way anyone could be saved, the hearts of he
people were hardened against Him until they could not
believe.  They could not believe because they would not
believe.  God wanted them to be saved, Jesus wanted them t
be saved, the Holy Spirit wanted them to be saved, but they
would not trust in Him that they might be saved.
	John once again brings Isaiah into the picture.  V. 41,
"These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake
of him."  In other words John is explaining to us that what
gave the people in Isaiah's day and excuse for rejecting his
message was the fact that he told them about His vision when
he saw the glory of God in heaven.  The people could
remember an Old Testament scripture from the writings of
Moses which said that no man could see God and live.
Therefore they used this as an excuse for not believing
Isaiah.  It is true that no man in his flesh can see the
fulness of God's glory and live, but Isaiah had seen only a
vision of God in His limited glory.  Isaiah never claimed
that he had seen the fulness of God's glory  and lived.  But
the people used that scripture written by Moses as out
excuse for rejecting the message of God sent by Isaiah.
	In the days of Jesus essentially the same thing had
happened.  The people likewise used the writings of the Old
Testament as an excuse for rejecting Jesus as the Christ.
In Isaiah's day they used the writing of Moses as an excuse
for rejecting Isaiah the prophet of God.  In Jesus's day
they used the writing of Isaiah as an excuse to reject
Jesus, the Son of God.
	So the vast majority of the Jewish people have now
rejected Jesus as the Christ.  This includes the vast
majority of the common people.  This is in addition to the
chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees who had long
ago rejected Him.

IV.  SOME KEY LESSONS FOR US

	Listen, let me point out to you some of the key factors
here.  First off, let me point out to you that you are in
this life only for a little while and that you will soon go
out of this world into another world.
	Secondly, let me point out to you that you are a sinner
in the sight of God.  I am not telling you something that
you do not already know.  You know this a lot better than I
do.  You know that you are a sinner.  I do not know the
particular sins that you have committed, but you do.  At
least, you are aware of many of them.  Perhaps you have
forgotten some of them, but you do know that you have sinned
many times.
	The next thing of key importance is that there is no
other way in this world for you to be saved except by
repenting of your sin and by trusting Jesus Christ to be
your Savior.  If you are dead set against repenting of your
sin you will never trust Jesus for salvation.  If you never
trust Jesus to save your soul you will never get to heaven.
It's just that simple.
	There is no excuse for not calling on Jesus and asking
Him to save you.  Like the people of Israel you may come up
with some excuses, but there none that will hold water.  You
may use some of us church members as an excuse and point out
the faults and failures that we have, but that excuse will
not hold up when you stand before God in judgment.
	Neither is there any excuse for those who are saved for
not making their profession of faith public, following Jesus
in baptism, getting into the membership of a good New
Testament church and going to work for Jesus.  John could
not make excuses for Christians in his day and I cannot make
excuses for Christians in our day.  If you let the faults
and failures of other Christians stand in your way of doing
what God wants you to do, then you are just increasing your
own faults and failures.
	I am going to call upon our musicians to come forward in
preparation for our invitation hymn.  I am going to call
upon all who are already saved to get in the Lord's will and
get in the Lord's work.  I am going to call upon you who are
unsaved who genuinely want to be saved to call upon Jesus
and trust Jesus to save your soul.  I am also going to call
upon you to come forward and make your profession of faith
in Jesus public.