The Price of Persistent Unbelief | Dave Sloop

Good morning, everyone. Glad that you're here today. I want to put a phrase up on the screen, and I want you to just think about what comes to mind when you see it, based on a true story.

When was the last time you saw a movie that started with a screen like that? If you're anything like me, you love movies that are based on a true story. But if you dig into those movies that are based on a true story, what you often find is that Hollywood puts a lot of effort on the "based on" part. It rarely says, "This is a true story" because what Hollywood knows is that sometimes the truth needs to be edited somewhat in order to produce a good story.

Have you ever seen The Greatest Showman? It is one of my favorites. We own it on Amazon Prime, we watch it often. I think Melissa and I saw that a few times in the theater. We love the music, we love the story, and we love this man, Phineas Taylor Barnum. Except, when you dig into the truth about P.T. Barnum, he just wasn't that great. He's kind of a bad dude. Sorry, I don't mean to disillusion you. Actually, yes, I do. I mean to disillusion you because I am making a point.

And it's this: oftentimes, when Hollywood gets their hands on a true story, what they do is they take it into the editing room and they sit around the table and they think, "What flaws do we need to erase? In what context that isn't real context do we need to introduce here so we can tell a better story? How can we present a protagonist that they will love so that we can tell a story that will move their heart?" They do a good job. And truthfully, in Hollywood, it's okay to do that because the goal is to entertain us.

Here's why I bring it up. I think sometimes, as disciples of Jesus Christ or as anyone who is seeking to know the true God, we will at times come to places in this book where we will read things and we will be tempted to take this book to the editing table. Actually, let me say it more precisely. We will be tempted to take God to the editing table, and we will be doing it for the same reason that Hollywood does it. We will be seeking to invent a God that is more palatable for the world because we want to tell a story that is a good story, and we don't want any difficult impression of God to distort what could have otherwise been a great story. And the moment that we do that, what we've actually done is we've invented a God that doesn't exist, and therefore we are telling a story that will have little to no impact.

There's something else we should mention here. Hollywood is smart to erase some details from the P.T. Barnum story because he does have flaws that need to be erased. God doesn't. He is not embarrassed by what he has revealed about himself in his word. He doesn't need to be defended. He's quite comfortable with his word that has gone forth, that we might know and understand things about him. And therefore, when we come to his word, I'm just going to give away the ending right now because this is my deep hope for myself and for everybody within the sound of my voice right now. It's this: that we would become the kind of people that inevitably—and you will, by the way—get to a place in his word where you think, "I wish that wasn't there." That we would become the kind of people that don't put him on the editing table, but that we bring ourselves to the editing table and say, "God, I don't get this, but would you help me to see? I'm not going to explain this away. I'm not going to turn this into something that it doesn't ultimately mean. But Lord, would you turn me into someone who can just trust you even with things that appear to be difficult or contradictory?"

I want to remind you of something that Jesus said in John chapter eight, verses thirty-one and thirty-two.

If you hold on to my teaching, you are truly my disciples. — John 8:31-32

In other words, true disciples will confront teachings they have to hold on to, and the reason that they need to hold on to them is because they want to let go like a hot potato. You don't want that truth in your hand because it's uncomfortable and it challenges some assumptions that you have about the story that you want to tell yourself and the world. But God is not asking you to rewrite the story. He's not asking you to change the context or put in some details or erase some facts about him. He wants you to hold on to it, and there's a promise attached to it. Because in verse 32, it says:

Then you will know the truth. — John 8:32

It is when we cling to these difficult truths that we finally become the kinds of people that can see.

This is the posture that I hope is being developed in me and every single person here today. Let God be true and every man a liar. Today is one of those passages. When I first read it in preparation, I started reading it and studying it a couple weeks ago and I just winced. I kind of didn't want to teach this passage, not because I hadn't dealt with this or grappled with it, but grappling with it in my own private study is one thing, but having to stand up here and help you to try to come to understand what this difficult tension is is a different thing altogether.

Let me tell you what I think John is trying to do today. We're gonna see a nation that should have recognized Jesus reject him. In fact, of all the people in the world, they should have seen it. They had the promises, the prophets, they had the temple, the presence of God. They knew what he would be like when he came because it was foretold. And on top of that, they were the ones who were witness to his miracles, his signs, his divine power, and still, we're going to see that they did not believe.

Here is what John is teaching us today. Three things. First of all, he's going to diagnose their unbelief. How is it that this nation did not believe? He's gonna give us three reasons. And that third they're all difficult. They compound. They get worse as you go. But that third reason that we're gonna look at, it is going to produce a difficulty. There is a difficulty with the diagnosis that makes us uncomfortable. That's the second point. And then the third point is this: How do we move from difficulty to delight? How do we take these seemingly uncomfortable, maybe even to some contradictory truths and hang on to them as Jesus invites us to so that we can become the kind of people that he means to produce when we trust him.

Turn with me, if you would, to John chapter 12 and we're gonna look beginning in verse 37.

Though he had done so many signs before them, they still did not believe him. — John 12:37

This is the story of John's gospel, by the way. As we come to the end of the book of signs, chapter 11 was his last sign, this is going to be his last public address. Tim is gonna deal with it last week, and then we close the book of the signs and we begin chapter 13. As he moves now to a private conversation for the next four chapters with his disciples, this is his last public address. It's his last words in a sense, and he's going to end the book of signs in the same way that he began it. Do you remember what he said in chapter one?

True light was coming to the world. He was in the world, yet the world did not know him. He came to his very own and yet his own people did not receive him. — John 1:9-11

They rejected him. Why? How?

Reason Number One

Reason number one, he tells you, is gonna come from Isaiah 53. Says in verse 38:

So that the words 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?" — John 12:38

This is Isaiah and he is saying in chapter 53, why is it that nobody believes what we're saying? The answer to that rhetorical question is almost no one. Who has believed? Almost no one. To whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? Nobody saw it. And to understand why they didn't see it and to understand a big reason that people don't believe, let me read to you just an excerpt.

To whom is the arm of the Lord? His arm is his salvation. It is his working in the lives of how come nobody saw it? He had no former majesty that we should see him. He had 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 hid their faces, he was despised and we esteemed him not.

They did not believe him because he was not the Messiah they wanted. It would also be true to say he was not the Messiah that they expected, but that leaves something out. He was not the Messiah that they wanted. And if you're honest with yourself in your sin, he's not the Messiah that you want either.

See, they wanted a leader. They wanted a general. They wanted a political conqueror. But the Messiah that you and I and they are willing to receive says something to us about the salvation that we think that we need. If the Messiah that we need is a political conqueror, here's necessarily what that means: The problem is out there. You have come to save me from a problem that is primarily out here with my enemies and foes that have come against me, and I'm part of your people, and you've come to save me from them, and that is not who he came to be. He came to save to be sure, but the salvation that you and I need and that they need, it is not from a problem out here. It is from a problem right here.

He came low. He came humble. He came meek. They didn't recognize him because they didn't think they needed a savior. He came and they were almost embarrassed of him to look at him. Do you notice why they call him a stumbling block?

Because Jesus came so low that you trip over him. To see him, you've gotta bow your face in the dirt and get low in humility to realize God condescended so low to allow himself to be nailed to a cross, to be depicted as my sin. When I see him, what I'm seeing is that I am so far gone that the kind of salvation I need required that of our God. And that requires a level of humility and a level of self awareness that we don't like and they didn't either.

I put up this quote from A.W. Tozer that speaks to this problem, this condition in us:

We wanna be saved but we insist that Christ do all the dying. No cross for us, no dethronement, no dying. We remain king with the little kingdom of man's soul and wear a tinsel crown with all the pride of Caesar.

We don't want to admit that we are helpless, that we bring nothing to the table, that our salvation isn't a partnership, that he has to literally provide everything—not only the righteousness that we need, but also the payment for the sin that we have committed in offending a holy and perfect God. He fills it up both in his life and his death. It's a hard pill to swallow. That's reason number one for unbelief: we struggle to bend low enough to see how deep our need is.

The Second Reason for Unbelief

Here's the second reason. It says, "Therefore, they could not believe." First of all, they would not believe. They refused, and therefore it was their sinful choice—a guilty unbelief. Secondly, they could not believe, and here's where it starts to get a little more problematic. Listen to this language and let it sink in and just let God's word speak. We're not trying to edit him.

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.

What is happening here? This is from Isaiah chapter six. If you remember that passage, it's when Isaiah sees God on the throne—he's high and lifted up. He sees him in all of his glory and instantly he says, "I'm a man of unclean lips." The angel comes over and touches him in the mouth, and he sends him out to preach. This is where his ministry begins in chapter six.

And at the beginning of Isaiah's ministry, he says, if you notice the Old Testament reading, what it actually said is: "Go make their hearts dull with your preaching. Go make their ears heavy, blind their..." He's saying, "You are going to be my agent of judgment against the people that have already rejected me."

Isaiah's ministry begins in chapter six. There are five chapters that come before it, and it is all about how disobedient and idolatrous and rebellious that nation is. They've already chosen that they don't want God. And here's what this hardening is. It's what theologians call a judicial hardening. What he says is, "You can have what you want."

It is Romans chapter one. They, knowing the truth of God, they exchanged the truth about God for a lie. And then you're gonna see, I think, four times in Romans chapter one, "he gave them up. He gave them up. He gave them up." He gave them what they wanted. It is the prodigal son coming to his father and saying, "Give me my inheritance"—in other words, "I don't want life with you. I don't want you. I just want your stuff. Give me my share." And the father gives it to him. That is, in a sense, the judicial hardening of that. He let him go.

If you walked into that movie in the middle of it, what you would see is a kid who had a father that abandoned him. He's eating out of the pigpen. And you might think, "How could a loving father allow that?" And you would have missed the first half of the story. The son rejected the father. The son essentially said to him, "I wish you were dead." This is what Israel had done. And just prior to this, Jesus has said, "The window is closing. The light is here. Believe while you can because soon the darkness will overtake you." God is pronouncing a judicial hardening on Israel.

The Third Reason: Sovereignty and Responsibility

But there's a third reason and here's where it gets uncomfortable, even more uncomfortable than this might already feel. If you look back at verse 37, verse 38 rather, it's referring to their sinful unbelief and it says:

So the word spoken by the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled.

That is to say, God sovereignly ordained their unbelief and also their unbelief was their own sinful choice for which they are responsible. They were not coerced into unbelief. It fully was theirs and also God was sovereign. It was part of his design that through his sovereign plan, he would bring about his redemptive purposes, and part of his redemptive purpose includes sinful unbelief.

And here's the question that we have to ask: How can God be sovereign and man still be responsible? How can God hold these people responsible for an unbelief that was somehow sovereignly in his plan? This is the question that we have to consider. And listen, when I say we have to, we have to because it's not just here.

It is everywhere in God's word. And therefore, here's what we can know about it. First of all, somehow this is good news. What God has revealed of himself, he has revealed so that we might see him and so that it might bring joy into our life. When Jesus said, "I've told you these things so that my joy would be in you and your joy would be full," he was the full revelation of God. Look, incomplete understanding, incomplete joy. This is not a side issue throughout Scripture.

Let me give you a few examples before we dig into this.

In Isaiah chapter 10, God is going to say to Israel about the nation of Assyria—he refers to them as his rod of anger. In his anger that burns against his people that he loves, he's going to use an instrument of his judgment: Assyria. He sends Assyria to attack them, and then he turns to Assyria and punishes them for attacking Israel. How do we reconcile those two things?

The point is this: the Bible sees no apparent contradiction. Man is 100% responsible, and God somehow is sovereign. His sovereignty is maintained. Their guilt remains.

Here's the second one. In the Exodus, Pharaoh hardened his heart. God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Which was it? Yes. It was both. Not just partly God, partly Pharaoh. A hundred percent Pharaoh—he is fully responsible for his sinful choice to harden his heart against God—and God is sovereign.

Here's another one: Joseph. Joseph who was betrayed by his brothers, thrown into a pit, left for dead, sold into slavery. It's just a crazy life that Joseph leads. And at the end, when his brothers finally realize what they have done and who he is and the way that he has climbed the ladder, Joseph looks at his brothers and he says this—and the language matters:

What you meant for evil, God meant for good.

Hear me. He did not say, "What you meant for evil, God managed for good." That would be so much more comfortable for you and me to believe. What you meant for evil, God meant for good. What's he saying? One action that Joseph would be delivered up. Different intent. God's motive was redemptive. Their motive was sin. God maintains his sovereignty. They maintain their guilt.

Can I explain it fully? No. Both are there, and we have to hold on to both. By the way, here's something else that it means. This principle—what it means is that even my sinful choices are somehow contained within God's good and sovereign plan. That in my life, I will do things that grieve the heart of God that were written into his sovereign plan.

In Psalm 139, when David says:

All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I could go on and on, but let me end with this one because it's the most obvious. In Acts chapter 2, when Peter is preaching that famous sermon, verse 23 says this:

This Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men.

Why was Jesus crucified? By the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, and you crucified him by the hands of lawless men. The greatest sin ever committed was the death of the Son of God who was murdered by sinful men, who were not coerced into murdering Jesus. They did what they wanted, and at the same time, it was the definite will and plan and foreknowledge of God. It was both.

Now, can we fully understand this? Can we fully explain this? Not on this side of eternity. I haven't gotten there yet. Are there attempts that we can make? Yes. But bear with me.

Sometimes when we pursue Christ—and this is just one of many examples that we could pick from, and this just happens to be our text today—there are some times when we have to, like Isaiah did in chapter 55, say:

As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are your ways above my ways and your thoughts above my thoughts.

And that is not intellectual laziness. It is creature humility. It is me recognizing that, of course, a finite human being should not be able to, and will never be able to, get my head entirely around the infinite complexity of God who made everything. He is sovereign over it all, and he is, and we are responsible. Both of those truths are all throughout the Scriptures.

Moving from Difficulty to Delight

Now, with the five minutes we have left, let's talk about how we move from that difficulty to delight. What does it look like to hold on to both of those truths? To not put him on the editing table, but to put ourselves on the editing table and allow him to smooth out rough edges that exist in us and make it difficult for us to accept this hard teaching.

Here's the first thing. When we are willing to hold on to both of these truths, let me just put it this way: we need both of these things to be true. We need it to be true that God is sovereign, and we need it to be true that we are responsible and mankind is responsible.

Here's the first thing: when we're willing to hold on to both of those truths, it produces tremendous humility. Or another way of saying that is it kills my pride. If my belief is not the product of my wisdom, my intellect, my search for God, or the product of my humility, then I have nothing to brag about. It's just him. It's what he did, what he produced. Even if you say that your faith, my faith is the reason that I believe in God—well, then suddenly you've turned your faith into a work that you can boast in. Because somebody else that I know didn't, and I'm smarter than that person. We become prideful the moment that we believe that my fill-in-the-blank contributed to my salvation, my belief. It produces tremendous humility.

Here's the second thing: unshakable security. If his love for me, if his affection for me is based on anything other than just his affection for me that he chose to set on me, I am in fear of losing it. Even if how you understand the sovereignty of God is this: God knew who would choose him, he knew what free man would choose to do, and therefore he puts his love on the people that he knew would choose him—if that's how you try to work that puzzle out. The problem with that is we've turned that into God loves me because of what I would do one day. He loves me because he knew I would do it. He knew I would be the one that had the eyes to see and the heart to be humble enough and the wisdom to accept. We lose unconditional love at that point. He loves us because he loves us because he loves us, which means that when Paul says nothing can separate me from the love of God, it includes me. I can't separate me from the love of God. My sin can't separate me from the love of God.

Here's a third thing: it gives us peace without making us passive. Can you imagine if God's plan for your life was up to you? Tim Keller puts it this way: can you mess up God's plan for your life? His answer is yes and no, but ultimately, no. Not yes, not no, but ultimately, no. Because even my biggest failures, I can exhale and go, "Somehow, I'm still responsible. This is still my choice. God's heart was grieved and my life is different because of it"—and yet I cannot afford the ultimate sovereign purposes of God. Even my sin fits within his good and perfect plan. It gives me tremendous peace, but then it protects me from being passive.

Because if what we believe is that God is sovereign, therefore everything's already predetermined and it leads to fatalism—therefore what I do doesn't matter anyway. God's gonna have his way. If that's where we go, it produces a very different kind of person. But God says, "No. No. No. Our choices matter. There will be people that meet Christ because you spoke to them. He will look at you one day and you will be rewarded for faithfulness that was actually your choice." Our choices matter and God is sovereign. And when you hold on to both of those, it creates a sense of peace but without us becoming passive.

Learning to Trust

Here's the final thing: it teaches me to trust. As we study God's word, we're not just seeking to learn facts about him. We're seeking to know someone. And whenever we get to a difficult place in God's word, we can remember the one who spoke it and we can realize that he has revealed himself to us in one particular person, Jesus.

In fact, do you know that Isaiah chapter six and Isaiah 53 both terminate in the same place? At the end of this passage here, John is gonna say, "Isaiah spoke of him because he saw his glory." Isaiah, when he saw God, what he was seeing was the glory of Christ. And when Isaiah 53—Jesus was lifted up, he was looking at Christ.

When we read God's word and we remember the one who spoke it, we realize that the same one who wrote this thing that is difficult to accept is also the one who crushed his son. Do you know that in Isaiah 6, Isaiah's response to that hard word, "Make their hearts dull," is, "How long, God?" And God said, "Until my judgment, in a sense, has run its course, and he's gonna cut the nation down like a tree." And then he says, "But in my stump is a holy seed." God's sovereign purposes are to bring about his redemptive purposes in a way that we could not possibly imagine, but if we could see with his eyes, we would be choosing what was happening.

Isaiah 53 does not just say that he was lifted up. It says it was God's will to crush him. And here's what Romans 8:31-32 says, and we'll end here:

He who did not spare his own son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? — Romans 8:31-32

When you struggle with these difficult truths about God but are willing to come and allow yourself to be edited on the editing table, fruit begins to bubble up in your life and you begin to realize, I can trust him because he crushed his son. We become the kind of people he made us to be.

Let's pray. Father, we thank you for this hard truth. We ask that you would work it into our lives, that we would become the kind of people from John chapter eight who hold on to your teaching in order that we might know the truth and the truth would set us free.

Lord, I thank you for the truth. There's never been a person who wanted you that you turned away. — John 8

Lord, you are God of mercy. I pray that some today, in hearing this, would turn, come to you, be healed. Christ's name. Amen.