John chapter 7, and I'll begin reading with verse 1. Of course, we're going to continue in our look at John's gospel. We completed chapter 6 a couple of weeks back, last opportunity I had to preach. We had a couple of special services since then, so this morning we're going to pick back up John chapter 7, verse 1. The Bible says, After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jews' feast of the tabernacles was at hand. His brethren therefore said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, and he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. For neither did his brethren believe in him. Then Jesus said unto him, My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. For the world cannot hate you, but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up into this feast. I go not up yet into the feast, for my time is not full come. When he had said these words unto them, he abode still in Galilee. If you remember, if you've been with us through the preaching previously, and if not, we're going to take a quick look back, because it's been a couple of weeks since we've been here. Remember in chapter 5 and 6, we had the feeding of the 5,000. That was men only. We counted the women, the children, the families, everyone. It could have been 20, 30, 40, 50,000 people there that was a part of that. We had that many. There was a group of people that shadowed Jesus. And as I said then, the reason I use the word shadowed is because not all of them followed him for the right reasons. Jesus was performing miracles. He was feeding people. People were coming to him because they were interested in the show. But then there were a few that were following him, his disciples, those that would be the apostles. That crowd went from being thousands and tens of thousands to just twelve at the end of chapter 6. And that's where we're at now. Jesus is talking to this small crowd of a dozen folks. Now, in today's standards, if a church would go from 20,000, let's say, to 12, in a matter of a few months, they would say, well, there's something going on there, and there's a problem. Well, there was a problem all right, but it was a sin problem. You see, Jesus was telling people what their need was. Jesus was telling people what He could do for them and why they needed Him and they were pushing back. They were pushing back. We're seeing more and more often in Scripture that many of the people who shadowed Jesus were there for selfish reasons. They had their own agenda that they were wanting. They were there for what they could get from Jesus and not what Jesus could provide through them. Now there's a difference in that. If we come to Jesus and we're looking strictly to Him and we're there only for the purpose of what He can give to us and we're not there to follow Him in obedience and allow Him to work through us to get to others, then we've got a problem that's called selfishness. spiritual selfishness. And there was a lot of folks that were dealing with that in Jesus' day, and honestly, there's a lot of folks that deal with it today. There's a lot of folks that have it in their heart and in their mind, well, you know, I'll keep going to church as long as God's doing something for me. But the moment that God quits doing something for me, I no longer want any part of it. That may be a little harsh and a little straightforward this morning, but that's the way it is. It's the truth of the matter. People work hard trying to convince Jesus to follow their ambitions. We have folks today that spend their days trying to convince Jesus Why He needs to be on their team. Why Jesus needs to be taking care of him, of them, of him, of her, of the family, of the church. Why Jesus needs to be on their side taking care of them doing their things. Instead of coming to Jesus in obedience and in humility and saying, I'm here for you to work through. You know, if we're following Jesus, if we're born again and we have that heart of obedience, we're there for Him to work through. We're there for Him to use as a vessel, as a conduit. as a conduit. I'll use an old electrician's term there. And then when we run a conduit somewhere, we run it from point A to point B and we use it to pull wires in to get from point A to point B. It's a direct path and it has a direct specific purpose. That's what we have as Christians this morning. We have a specific purpose and that purpose is to take the gospel of Jesus Christ and to get it into the lives of those who have never heard it. We're a conduit. That's where our focus needs to be. That's where our heart needs to be. Well, Jesus stood firm on his purpose. Now, Jesus wasn't afraid of dying. He knew that the day would come when he would give up his life. Jesus wasn't concerned about that, but Jesus was concerned about getting ahead of God's plan. Jesus knew that God had a plan in his life. And Jesus knew that he had to fulfill that plan and that purpose. His brothers. His brothers. His brethren said unto him. Now those were his kin. Those were his half-brothers. James and Jude and Simon. There was one other. Those were his brothers. His own family was coming to Jesus and they were saying, listen Lord, if you're who you say you are and all of this stuff is true and all of this stuff is real, then you need to quit messing around Galilee because Galilee, let's just say it the way it was, Galilee is just some little country town with country people that had farmers and sheep herders and ranchers and those folks. It was just working class people. They didn't have a whole lot to offer Jesus. So His brethren, His family was saying, Why don't you get out of this rural setting? Why don't you get out of the country? And why don't you go to the big city? And why don't you start doing what you're doing down there so that you can get a name built up for yourself. And so that you can build up a crowd of people again. And you can go from twelve back to tens of thousands again. And you can be popular. And you can be wealthy. And you can be powerful. And you can do everything then that we want you to do. You see, Jesus' family wasn't saved yet. As a matter of fact, Jesus' brothers didn't accept him as Lord and Savior until after his resurrection. It was then when the light came on and they said, there really is something different about him. He is really the Messiah. But at this point, they were seeing him as a good salesperson. And they were trying to convince him to get out of the country, get into the city and start drawing numbers of people again. They were selfish and they were ambitious and they were wanting to use Jesus to fulfill that. But Jesus had a responsibility. And that responsibility was to his calling. And he meant to fulfill that responsibility. Our faith Our faith today should lead us to a heavenly responsibility, one focused on our work and on our direction and on our calling from God. So I want to point out this morning three areas of responsibility that come from this passage. First, I want you to notice with me there is a responsibility to remain where God places you. It's a lesson in patience and observant obedience. Jesus could have gotten impatient. Jesus could have said, hey, you know, that's a good thing. I need to get numbers of people here and I need to get this and I need to get that so I'll go on into Jerusalem and I'll take care of things there. But Jesus did not do that. He remained patient and he remained observant in his obedience to God the Father. It would do us well today to just back up often and take a good look around when we get the urge to go do something in a knee-jerk type reaction and just say, whoa, wait a minute. What does God want in this? What does God want? Are we willing to remain patient? Well, now how do we do that? How do we remain patient? By maturing. We mature in our life. We mature as we get older. Most of us mature. I say most because I know a lot of folks that should be mature because of the age, but they're very immature. I know some folks that are young and you'd think would be immature and they're very mature. But as a rule of thumb, as we get older in life experiences, we become more mature. Our walk with God is no different. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus Christ, we should become more mature and we should be able to reflect back on the experiences that God has placed in our lives. And through reflecting back on those, we should be able to say, wait a minute now, experience tells me that I need to hold up and not get into this too quick. I'll wind up stepping into a trap. I'll wind up stumbling over something. And as a leader, if you're responsible for leading the direction of an organization, of a church, of a business or whatever, becoming impatient and making knee-jerk calls and knee-jerk reactions can cause us to lead an entire organization into collapse. Not only are we to be mature and that to show our patience, but we are to be observant. And we do that by growing. Are we growing as an individual? Am I growing? I have to look in the mirror and I have a responsibility to ask, am I growing as a person? Am I growing as a Christian? Am I learning today things that make me a better Christian, a better person, a better pastor than I knew yesterday? If I am, then I should be observant of those things. I should recognize them and I should recognize how to apply them in my life. Each one of us should be willing to look through the Word of God, use it to focus upon our life, and then be observant to how we've grown day by day. Now we won't see growth over the course of a day. I see children here this morning, my grandchildren here this morning. I remember when they were as small as the infants that are here. I look at them now and I see pre-teens. I see strapping strong young boys and young ladies. They didn't grow like that overnight. They didn't happen overnight. And I certainly was not able to watch them grow inch by inch during the course of a day. But looking back over time, I see their growth. I see them as they have matured. I see them as they have developed. We have to look at our own lives that way this morning. We have to look at our own walk with Christianity, our own walk with God, our own life expectancies, and what God wants from us. The responsibility to remain where God places us is also found in obedience. How do we know if we're obedient? I mean really, what does that look like? We're being an example. That's what it looks like. If we're obedient to God, then we are an example that God can use and will use to draw others to him through Jesus Christ. We are an example. An obedient person is a good godly example of the gospel. The greatest testimony and the greatest witness that you will ever have in your life is the life you live. That's the greatest one. You can be the greatest speaker that has ever stood in front of someone. You can articulate words that just mesmerize people. But in the end, if you can't walk the walk, people don't care how well you can talk the talk. God wants people that can walk the walk. Notice the folks that he chose. Jesus did not choose the most well-spoken people. He chose fishermen. He chose workers. He chose tax collectors. He chose the most unlikely of people. But they had a testimony, and that testimony was an example to others that was lived out in their life. It wasn't what they said, it was who they were. If we're going to be obedient, we're going to have to be an example. That's the responsibility that we have to remain where God has placed us and as God has placed us, and that's in His service. We can serve God in many locations. We can serve God in many areas. We can serve God in many waltz. But we always have to remain consistent to the fact that we are a child of His. We are saved by grace through faith. And through that we need to be mature. We need to be growing daily. And we need to be an example that others can follow. We also see that in verses 2 through 5 that there's a responsibility to reply to the circumstances that we find ourselves in. Jesus was put on the spot. Jesus was put on the spot by His family. He was put on the spot by the community. He was put on the spot Hey, you've lost all your followers. You've gone out here in the country and you've lost all your followers. Go to Jerusalem and do what's necessary and get those folks back behind you again. And Jesus said, No. No, I'm needed more right here. And the reason I'm needed here is because he was in front of a worldly bunch of people. He was in front of a bunch of people who were selfish. He was in front of a bunch of people who were self-centered. He was in front of a bunch of people who were ambitious. How do we reply to those people in those circumstances when we find ourselves in them? If you're a child of God this morning, you're saved by grace through faith. You find yourself in that situation. You find yourself in a situation where folks are questioning you, where folks are challenging you to quit being so godly and start being more worldly in order to compromise on the Word of God so that the world can be more appealing. to the church. That seems to be a big trend going on today. The church wants to become appealing to the world so they become more like the world. How would Jesus ask us to respond to that? Well first, he would want to make sure that we relate to unbelievers. We can never get to the point where we cannot relate to people who don't believe. Folks who are lost and undone in their sin and in their lifestyle. Folks who are dealing with substance abuse. Folks who are traveling down the wrong roads in life. We can never lose track of the fact that we have to relate to them. Why? Because we are all sinners. We are all sinners. Some of us are saved sinners, born again, and some of us are not, but we are all sinners. I look back over my life and I have no qualifications to be standing up here. None. But God chose to place me in this spot for a particular reason. And that is a reason to relate to folks through the simple fact that if God will save me and call me and work with me in His service, He will do that to anyone. Anyone. We cannot lose track of the fact that we need to relate to the unbelievers. We don't have to compromise. God does not ask us to compromise anything. We don't have the ability or the authority or anything else to say something is not sin that He has already established as sin. That's not why I'm not saying we should do that. But I am saying that we need to make sure that those folks that are out there know that Jesus died for them. Jesus loves them. Jesus will save them. It's all about their relationship with Jesus. That's where we need to be pointing people to. We need to reach out to those that are seeking. We need to connect with questions. What are they looking for? What problems are they trying to fix? And not only do we need to ask the questions, but we need to be able to give them the proper answers when they do, when they respond. We need to be able to know how to present Jesus. How do we do that? Well, first of all, through our experiences. through our experiences. You don't have to have a seminary degree to be able to quote scripture from memory. That has nothing to do with it. People are interested in genuine conversion and they're interested in a genuine story. They're interested in your story. They're interested in how Jesus came into your life. They're interested in what Jesus has done in your life because if He can do it in your life, He can do it in their life. There are a lot of people out there today that are seeking something. That's why we have the substance abuse. That's why we have the domestic violence. That's why we have the structures and foundations in our communities breaking apart. Because they're seeking for something and they're willing to throw something away in order to go look for something else. What they're seeking for is Jesus. We have a responsibility to reply in repentance. Everything that we do and say in our lives should come back to repentance. If we mature, if we grow, if we work toward being an example, then repentance is going to be active in our lives. And if we are living that out in a responsibility to others, we're going to be teaching repentance to others. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Repentance is one of the greatest words in the Bible that was ever placed there. Oftentimes we look at repentance and we say, oh man, if I have to deal with that, that's just going to let everybody know that I have really messed up. Good. Good. God already knows when we mess up. We're not hiding anything from God. He knows. He's asking us to repent so that we can show everybody around us that He's willing to forgive us and restore us and put us back on the right track again and back on the right path. And if He can do it with me, He can do it with someone else. Repentance is one of the greatest words that's placed in the Bible because it speaks of grace and mercy and God's love to me. It speaks of God's love to you too. God says, you know when you mess up. I know when you mess up. So go ahead and get it confessed and get it out of the way and move on. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and go on with my work. And when others see it and see it lived out in our lives, They're going to be interested in getting hold of the same thing that we have. That's what Jesus wanted these folks to see here in Galilee. Yeah, He could have went to Jerusalem and they were already laying in wait for Him. They were wanting to kill Him and they were going to find any opportunity they could. But He knew that God's plan wasn't for Him to go there and experience that yet. He knew that He still had work to do and that work was leading people to repentance. That work was showing people that they were so focused on the world that they couldn't get beyond the world to see who Jesus really was. They couldn't get beyond their own ambitions. They couldn't get beyond their own expectations. They couldn't get beyond their own selfishness to see Jesus for who He was. The Redeemer. The one that would forgive sin. The one that would put us back on the right path again. That's the response that comes from the words of what Jesus had to say to these folks. And then he left. He left them as they went to Jerusalem to the Feast of the Tabernacles. They went to a party. They went to a big Jewish party called the Tabernacles. It would last for a week. But Jesus stayed there in Galilee because He had God's work to do. We can look at God's service in a couple of ways this morning. We can look at it in numbers of people and worldly measurement, or we can look at it in eternal measurement and heavenly measurement. God took 12 people, 12. that were uneducated, that were untrained, that were not appealing in the world's eyes. And He changed the world because they were spiritually in tune and obedient and guided by God's Word and God's directions. He can do the same today. He can do the same in this county. You're significant in God's work. You are. As a church, this little church is significant in God's work. We may only have fourteen of these backpacks to send off. And other churches may have hundreds. And that's great. I'm great they do. I'm glad they do. I think it's wonderful they have all of that. But think of this. One of these fourteen could go to the next child that grows up and God uses to fill the shoes of the Billy Graham's of this world. What you do and what this church does is significant in the eyes and in the work of God. That's why the missions work is so important. That's why the Great Commission is so important. That's why knowing and living out Jesus in our lives and the foundation that He has in our heart and our life is so important this morning. That's why I want you to take away your significance in God's work. and how you're willing to let God expand on that. Are you willing to let Him mature you, grow you, and let you be an example? Are you willing to be that example to others? Are you willing to relate to unbelievers? Are you willing to reach out to seekers? Are we willing to repent of our own shortcomings and have God fix them this morning? Those are questions I can't answer them for anyone but me. And I hope you've seen in the words of Jesus and in His work this morning in John chapter 7 the importance of it and how it can impact others and how it can change the lives of people. You can be the person that impacts the change in someone else's life. You, if you're that conduit that Jesus works through. I'd like to ask our musicians to come and give us a closing hymn. And as they do, I want to share with you a little story that I heard this weekend. There was a couple of men riding through the mountains of Alabama. Now, I didn't know Alabama had mountains until I listened to this story. But according to the story I listened to, there are mountains in Alabama. Anyhow, they were riding through the mountains of Alabama, and they got into this little rural community, and they started walking around. They found an old abandoned house or two, and they were walking around. They walked around the back of the house, and they found one of these old hand pumps. You know what I'm talking about? Little hand pumps. Well, one of them was thirsty. I want to drink water. I wonder if there's any water in here. The other one, yeah, I'm sure there's water in there. Well, you're just going to have to keep pumping because the water's all run back down to the bottom of the well. You're just going to have to keep working, keep working, keep working. That one was standing there, he was working. You know, there's nothing coming out, I might as well quit and just go on somewhere else. He said, no, no, no, no, hold on, you've got to prime the pump. He lowered, they got some water. He primed the pump and he kept pouring the water in and pouring the water in and pouring the water in. He kept working and pumping, pouring the water in and working and pumping and pouring the water in and pumping and pumping and pumping. And finally, water came out. Well, that's great. That's great. You had to prime the pump. What I want you to see in that is you don't get anything out unless you put something in. What do you want to get out of your Christian experience? What do you want to get out of your life with God? What are you willing to put into it? What are you willing to let God put into your life to prime you so that you can get something out? Otherwise, you're just sitting there working that pump handle. and nothing is going to happen. It doesn't matter how hard you work, unless you are willing to let God put something into your life, nothing is going to come out of it. You're going to work and work and work and work and work and work and in the end you'll get frustrated. Let God put something in and let God prime that pump this morning. Let God prime the pump with the responsibility that we have in our Christian walk, a biblical responsibility, a Christian responsibility. As we sing this morning, if God's dealing with your heart, would you come? Would you come? Ladies.