JOHN 2:23-25 PODCAST
23 Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name. 24 But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all people. 25 He did not need any testimony about mankind, for he knew what was in each person.
John 2:23-25
The goal of John’s Gospel is that we might believe in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord. The key verse is found in John 20:31: “These are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”
In out text, many, including the disciples, observed the Lord Jesus perform miracles and they believed. Yet, as our text indicates, the Lord Jesus did not seem to commit himself to just anyone. How many people have we all known who seem to become believers in Christ and, in time, there seemed to be no reality to their relationship with the Lord. John explains this phenomena here in our text. The Lord Jesus doesn't entrust Himself to everyone because He knows who believes and who does not believe. I guess that explains why I am shocked I continue to believe. The unbeliever is still with me.
They say that 55% of what we communicate is through the non-verbal and 38% through the tone and 7% through the content or the words we use. And, even though we may be able to read others well, we can't read the heart. But, the Lord Jesus can. He has never been deceived. Though some came to Him and said they wanted to follow Him, He could read their hearts and know whether it was real or not.
This brings up something very serious; how do we know when our faith is real? The real belief is believing faith. There will be times in all of our lives that we feel that we no longer believe, but if the faith in us perseveres, well, it is real. And, the reason it perseveres is because it is His faith. We have received it and appropriated it. With time, we are more and more convinced. Someone once said, "you'll never be convinced Jesus is all you need until He is all we have."
The Lord Jesus knows what is in every heart, and He can see when someone believes in a way that is not really believing. He has the ability to know every heart and this leads to the unsettling truth that some belief is not the kind of belief that obtains fellowship with Jesus and eternal life. Some belief is not authentic, saving belief. This means that there are no complete secrets in our lives. The person whose judgment about us is all important knows all. There is one, and only one, who actually and totally knows us.
Now, there is a kind of faith in Jesus that He does not approve. This is the implication of His omniscience. The implication is when He looks into the heart of those who do not believe, He sees something other than the kind of faith that makes one a child of God.
We read in John 1:12, “To all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.” And here in John 2:23 we read, “Many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing.” And here in John 2:24, “But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.”
The Lord Jesus withholds Himself from those who do not believe in His saving way. Not all who look faithful are really of faith in the God of the Bible. And, as is suggested in our text, they believed in His signs rather than in Him. It is dangerous to be a sign-seeker, running from one sign to another. The hunger and thirst is a craving for the spectacular.
We would think that someone with this power, the ability to know all, would be able to move through life avoiding anything negative. But it wasn’t Jesus’ plan. He knew what was in man, including Judas (John 6:64). And so He chose when and where and how and why He would die. And He did it for you and me.
If we see Him and His cross as the greatest glory and believe on Him, the Lamb of God takes away all our sins, and we will have eternal life. I like how M. Craig Barnes once put it, "if we try to make a created thing our god, we will soon find that we are holding nothing. Because things find their meaning only in their created origin." Only the Lord Jesus is the God who laid His life down for those who rebelled against Him. The question is this: do we believe and have we received from Him His salvation?
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