So John 7 and verses 1 to 13 will be our text for this morning's sermon. Sermon title, The Greater Feast of Tabernacles. Give your diligent attention now to God's holy, inspired, and infallible Word. 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 to it or 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. Amen. Amen. Thus the word of God. Please pray with me as we ask the Lord's blessing upon the preaching of it this morning. Our Father in heaven, we confess to you that we are weak and needy. And Lord, we implore you now, we ask that you would be pleased to send forth your word in the power of your spirit. Would you be pleased this morning to bless both the preaching and the hearing of your word to the exaltation of your son, our Lord Jesus Christ, and to the glory of your name. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. So, we begin a new section in John. Section largely made up of four chapters. Chapters 7 through 10. And we'll see hostility, unbelief, and division in these chapters. Sort of a theme that's going to run under them. what we see in our opening section, as we'll really mark the next four chapters in this gospel account. But the emphasis in those three will lie on the hostility towards Jesus and the fear incited by it, particularly in the next two chapters. And what we're going to see more of here is that the brighter the light shines, The more the light of who Jesus is shines, the more the darkness is revealed for what it truly is. The more the light shines, the more the darkness is revealed for what it truly is. One commentator says the ambience of chapter seven and eight is captured in the first verse, hostility, persecution, and ill will. We will feel this tension in almost every incident. The first verse says that the Judeans were trying to kill him. The 13th verse will speak of fear of the Judeans, clamping this 13th verse passage into a unit. So this first section, verses one to 13, sets the tone for the rest of the chapter and even the broader section, as we've mentioned. But as we'll see from the sermon title, there is gospel in this passage. We will see in the midst of the darkness that the light is not just here to point out the darkness, but to be the divine remedy, the one who can bring dead hearts back to life, the one who can feed hungry souls. Verse one says, after these things, Jesus walked in Galilee for he did not want to walk in Judea because the Jews sought to kill him. Now this is a six month period between Passover, which is what the after these things refers to, going all the way back to the beginning of chapter six, and the Feast of Tabernacles at present in verse two. There's six months here in this period, and it says he walked in Galilee. What should we understand by that? We understand that he's basically going back and continuing ministry. He's continuing his ministry in Galilee. The events that occur here are recorded for us in the other gospel accounts. Particularly, you could see these in Matthew 12 to 17. And the reason is given as to why he stays back. It's because the Jews are again seeking to kill him. This is, I believe, the second time it's been mentioned in this gospel. He is a wanted man now, in a sense. His reason is, once again, because he is on A specific time frame. This is why he won't go there. He's on a specific time frame. A divine one, that is. It is not a fearful staying back, as we know, but a purposeful one. Verse two says, now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. The Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tabernacles commemorates Israel's time in the wilderness and God's provision and deliverance from them around that time. It is a joyful and very popular festival, the most popular of the three pilgrim feasts. The scene would have been fall. It's harvest time, which added to its joyful and glad nature, not only in light of God's previous provision, but of his current provision at harvest as well. There would be huts set up all over the place in rural areas where people would stay in them the entire week. In town, they would pitch these huts or tents on their rooftops. And there was both an opening and closing ceremony, large opening and closing ceremony to this great feast on the first and the last day. Plumer says that it involved much of both the discomfort and also of the merriment of a picnic, if that helps. It involves the discomfort and also the merriment of a picnic. It would be similar to a festival one would go to today where you camp out for the duration of the festival. It was the favorite amongst the Jews. They simply called it the feast. Again, whole villages would go up for it. And in addition to its remembrance and joy of God's provision, it had come to be associated with beyond that to eschatological hopes, messianic hopes, hopes of the tabernacling presence of God among them, hopes of God's lasting and ultimate provision. The joyfulness, if you want to sense some of this, is captured in Deuteronomy 16, verses 13 to 15. It says, you shall observe the Feast of Tabernacles seven days when you have gathered from your threshing floor and from your wine presses. And you shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servants and your female servants, and the Levites, the stranger and the fatherless and the widow who are with you within your gates. Seven days you shall keep a sacred feast of the Lord your God in the place which the Lord chooses because the Lord your God Will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands so that you surely rejoice And there were additional practices that had been added to it Such as a water pouring and a candle lighting ceremony which shaped Jesus words and actions which we will address later on in this chapter as we come to those parts of the text and Thus the setting. And now on to the conflict. Verse three gives us the conflict. 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. How are we to read this? Are they thinking, boy, that must have been tough to lose so many disciples. But listen, we know how you can turn all that around. And in addition, you could restore some of the honor to our own names as your relatives that you've casted all this dishonor upon. Some commentators take it that way. It's plausible, but I'm not convinced. I think that what they're doing here is flat out mocking Jesus. and other portions of the gospel tip us to his own family's attitude towards him. And John has already hinted at this in an exchange that he mentioned earlier, John 4, 44, where Jesus' words are thus, for Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country. So I believe their tone is mocking. You should leave here, your disciples, the works you are doing, Notice how they don't want any involvement in it. You, your, you. All are used in a hyperbolic sense. They're exaggerated. The majority of his disciples had left at this point. And they don't think much of his works as we come to find out. The phrases are put in such a way that they challenge what they claim. The phrases here are put in such a way that they challenge what they claim. In other words, you're a nobody. You're a nobody. You should get out of here and go show the world, along with all of your disciples, what you're really capable of. It's similar to the way Joseph's brothers so scornfully spoke of him. Here comes that dreamer. This is the tone with which his brothers and kin are speaking to him. 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. In addition to the mocking tone, they tell Jesus what they perceive his motives to be. You're just trying to grab attention. You want to be famous. So obviously now is the time, right? If you want fame and recognition, now is the time at the feast. If you're doing these things, sarcastically mocking the signs, show yourself to the world. Again, it's exaggerated. It would be like the mocking golden child that siblings hurl at the potentially more promising and younger sibling, right? Go show them golden boy. Ironically, John knows. that He will show Himself to the world, just not in the way that the world expects or desires, or that these His brothers would think. He will do so in the foolishness of the cross, the greatest work, the greatest display of love, power, and wisdom in all of history, yet hidden in the cross, hidden to unbelieving eyes. And we ought not to think that this is just a small tiff, a little sibling rivalry, or that there wasn't great temptation for Jesus in this account. No, it was. And we should see how glorious our Lord is here in His obedience, in His refrain from giving in to temptation. Public recognition and an unloving response here are genuine temptations in the life of Jesus. Genuine temptations for Him. I think sometimes we think Jesus never struggled. He did. He was tempted in every way we are except sin. Are you ever tempted to get glory for yourself? Are you tempted to lash out when you're mistreated? Yes, we are. Not only tempted, but we give in. He was tempted here, but he overcame it. How many times are we pressed with temptations from without and within, and we just throw in the towel? I've had enough. Maybe this week it's happened on multiple occasions. You persevered for a season of difficulty in a trial, and then your strength seems to fail. And you just say, I can't be upright anymore and give over to frustration and lash out at a child or family member, coworker, spouse, whatever it is. Or we just check out. We just check out, which is also sin. I know that's my tendency. But our Lord Jesus never did that. Not once. He never lashed out. He never checked out. No harsh words in response. The sinless, spotless Son of God, born of a woman, born under the law, obedient to the point of death, and all for us in our salvation. His own kin here, mocking and derision toward Him in full force. If there was any place where He might get some respite, some relief, it would surely be His own brothers. Think of what He's just come from. But rather than that, it's even heightened. Mark gives us a window into their view of Jesus to confirm how we've understood this. Mark 3.21 says, but when his own people heard about this, they went out to lay hold of him for they said, he is out of his mind. Isaiah 53, he was despised and we did not esteem him. And maybe you're thinking as you hear this account, man, what a bunch of morons. What a bunch of morons. If I was one of Jesus' brothers, I would have been so loyal. I would have worshiped and believed him. I can't believe how slow these guys are. But what John by the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us in this episode is that that is us left to ourselves. That is us left to ourselves. It's a picture again of fallen humanity. You would have done the same thing. And even if you weren't, let's say you're not somebody who would have been so active in this or explicit in ridicule and mocking, your complicit silence, your complicit silence would have spoken just as loudly, brothers and sisters. In any given pericope or narrative, there is always the consideration of behaviors to be avoided and behaviors to be imitated. And we ask of this pericope right here, this narrative, what is to be avoided here? Or what does this reveal about me, about my own heart? We are the ones despising, we are the ones not esteeming the sinless son of God. Maybe even this morning, perhaps if you aren't in Christ, you're laughing in your heart at this text and at this Jesus. But again, for all of us, the we in Isaiah is you and me, dear ones. These accounts that we have of the darkened world are not for us to stand outside of and look down and wonder at how cruel and wicked these folks are, but to see what we are at our core, apart from redeeming grace. And for us who have been redeemed by the Lamb, it's to further look into and to mortify the remaining corruption in our hearts and lives. Sure, you haven't openly mocked Him as here, But have you esteemed Him as you ought, in your words, in your life, to the unbelieving world around you? Another thing we want to avoid is trying to totally read Jesus here into your own life. Trying to read His situation here into your life like we'll experience the same. You go and act like a jerk at a family function and then say, well, look, Jesus' family persecuted Him and the same is happening to me. We don't look at it like that. In some cases, maybe, but probably not. None of us will ever go through the mocking and scorn that Jesus does here or in his life. And that even what we do, even when we do, it's always mixed with something of our own sin as a part of it. Probably none of us will respond the way Jesus did. Isaiah again says, yet he opened not his mouth. When we do get ridiculed, even for right behavior, we still like to sound off or plea our innocence. We have to say something, we feel. I've had conversations with grown and mature Christian men, where a simple criticism is brought up, only to hear the one accused snap back at the other and turn into a bickering match. You've done it. I've done it myself. And it ought not to be. But what we want to see is that our hope in this text is not that I might never do that again, even though I hope I don't. But that's not our hope. Our hope is that Jesus again never got back at His revilers, not even here, where again it would have been the easiest to let down amongst family. That is our hope, Christians. That is our hope. Not that you won't ever respond as you ought not, but that Jesus never responded. in a sinful way, not here, not once. Cling to Him first. See this glorious One, this sinless One here today in the living biography that the Lord has given to us. As the Spirit holds out His beauty for you to gaze upon. These words in this scene are as powerful and vivid today as they were then. All because of the Spirit that Christ has sent and is ongoing witness to Him in the Word. See Him here as your only hope and your all. And then go forth and freely imitate Him. Then go forth and freely imitate Him. Lovingly imitate Him. Do what He did here then. Not so that, but because He has so richly provided salvation for you. He overcame all temptation for us and for our salvation. Not that we might go and do it ourselves and earn for ourselves salvation. Moving to the end of this verse, This has already been hinted at. This is very much reminiscent of the devil's tempting of Jesus. Some suggest that John gives this account here as sort of a brief mention or nod to what he assumes you are already familiar with in the other accounts. I think that's a good analysis. As we move on to verse 5, the reader of John knows by now that his brother's motives are misdirected. We've seen what the response has been to his miracles. Carson says the brothers want Jesus to show himself to the world. But in John's most characteristic sense of that word, the world is precisely that which cannot receive him without ceasing to be the world. In one sense, Jesus has no intention of showing himself to the world. And yet, in another sense, the reader who presses on to the rest of this gospel discovers that it is in Jerusalem where Jesus reveals himself most dramatically. Not in the spectacular miracles the brothers want, but in the ignominy of the cross, the very cross by which Jesus draws all men to himself and becomes the savior of the world. End quote. In verse 5, for even his brothers did not believe in him. So at the end of the conflict in this story, our narrator John gives us an aside, as he so often does, an aside that explains and confirms how we've understood the previous verses. For even his brothers did not believe in him." And note that it's not misunderstanding. They didn't misunderstand him, but they didn't believe him. It's not misunderstanding, it's unbelief. They are and remain in darkness. In accordance with the gospel, according to John, is what he wants us to see. They are the world. They are the world. Show yourself to the world. Ironically, they are that unbelieving world that won't receive him. They have not got past the signs as we've discussed in previous sermons. The signs. They should have been windows by which one peers in to view Jesus' true identity. But they, along with the rest, will not. Then Jesus said to them, My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. My time. is similar to, perhaps you're already thinking this, similar to, but not identical to my hour. Similar to, but not identical to my hour, which looks to the passion and resurrection, it's primarily eschatological, my hour. Here, time has reference to the work of God in and through Christ as a whole. Jesus is on God's time, as we've discussed, providentially working out his redemptive purposes one step at a time. Sovereignly working. Nothing in this is insignificant is what we should grab here. I go not up at your request because your time is out of step with my time, which is God's time. Now he doesn't mention it, but we understand what going up with them at this time would have brought about. Think of how hyped everybody would have been. They're hype of Messiah. They would have again tried to make him king. As mentioned, the Jews are seeking to kill him. So he's not going to go. He can't go now. It's not his time. Again, not out of fear, but because he is sovereign over his own life. I lay down my life of my own accord and I will raise it up again. But in contrast, their time, is whenever, because they have no concern for the things of God. Therefore, it is not significant when you go. He's telling them in short that your view of me is nothing other than your view of God, unconcerned and unbelieving. One commentator says again, looking to Joseph's brothers, the only thing they're doing in accordance with God's plan and timing is unwittingly fulfilling God's purposes by their hateful behavior, which God will turn out for good. So he's separating himself from them. Sort of like he did with his mother. And this is all with reference to his redeeming work. He's separating them with reference to his redeeming work. He has redemption to accomplish. And even, as we'll learn later on, their redemption to accomplish, just like his mother's. Moving into verse 7. Calvin says the following, he says, they may freely and without danger appear at all hours before the world because the world is friendly and favorable to them. But he is in dread of his person and justly because the world is his mortal enemy. It was not right for him to rush headlong into danger, but that also he did not turn aside a hair's breadth from the course of his duty. Again, remember Jesus will lay down his life of his own accord. And verse 7 helps us further understand this. It gives further explanation. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify of it that its works are evil. Carson again says, thus, verse 7 simultaneously explains why Jesus will not rise to the challenge set him in verse 4 and why for the brothers any time is right. Their alignment with the world means they know nothing of God's agenda. They do not listen to His Word, do not recognize it when it comes, and cannot perceive the Word incarnate before them. They are divorced from God's time, His divine appointments, and so any time will do. All appointments that ignore God's time are in the eternal scheme of things equally insignificant. He says the world can't hate you. Literally, it's unable to hate you. He's identifying them at this point with the world. You are of the same stuff, the same essence as the world. It cannot hate its own. Consider the contrast to John 15, 19. John 15, 19 says, if you were of the world, the world would love its own. Yet because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you. If you are of the world, the world cannot hate you. If you are my true disciple, Jesus is saying, then the world cannot love you or will hate you. But the world does hate me because I testify that its works are evil. The world hates me because I testify that its works are evil, Jesus says. Listen carefully again to his brother's mocking challenge and how John plays on these words here. works in world. John 7, three to four, 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. Jesus' response is that when I show myself to the world by my works, when I tell the world I'm here to save it, that I'm the lamb that takes away sin, it implies that I testify first that its works are evil. And the world, as we know, hates having its evil deeds exposed. The evildoer, that is everyone outside of Christ, hates Christ and his gospel by nature. The evildoer hates Christ and his gospel because it exposes and it requires an acknowledgement of its own evil heart. Acknowledging that you are weak and needy, the need to repent, it shows that we're undone. While we really like to think, to the contrary, that we're all right, that we have everything intact for this life and the one to come. This is what happens though, this confrontation, this exposure, when someone comes into contact with Jesus and his gospel. That famous story about Billy Graham being out golfing with a professional golfer helps illustrate this. He's out golfing with a professional golfer, and upon the conclusion of the round, a reporter asked the golfer what it was like to golf with the great evangelist, to which he replied, I don't need Billy Graham stuffing religion down my throat. The reality was that Billy Graham hadn't said a word about religion, about God, about the Bible the entire round. The effect that the Christian, indwelt by the light, by the Spirit of Christ, can have on someone without even speaking is just as described here, very significant. How much more the very light himself, whose words and works expose the darkness even more, But while he does that, he's here to do more than this. As Richard Barcelos so helpfully put it in a sermon, he said, Jesus is not just running up and pulling on people's togas and saying, hey man, you're a sinner. What's wrong with you? Why won't you believe? I know because your heart is hard. What's wrong with you? It's not what Jesus is doing here. No, He says, I am here to expose you to your evil deeds, yes, but in order to redeem you from them. Your intentions, your words and deeds are all displays of your ongoing rebellion and defiance of your Creator. And your Creator Himself has come in the flesh to save you, to give you eternal life. Law and gospel must go together. There is no good news unless there's first bad news. And the grace given in Jesus and supplied by Jesus is far greater than the sins of the most vile sinner, brothers and sisters, far greater. Grace that is greater than all our sin as we sing. Verse 8 says, you go up, you go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come. What an amazing verse this is. Edward Klink has some remarkable insight into this verse. He begins by contrasting the similar commands. Listen to this. He says, Jesus ends his response to his brothers just as they had initiated their rebuke towards him. Jesus ends his response to his brothers just as they had initiated their rebuke toward him with a command. Jesus' command, however, is not derived from his own evil intentions, but is a response to, even a rebuke of, the evil intentions of his brothers. Jesus reiterates, though this time with different but parallel language, that my time has not yet been fulfilled. My time has not yet been fulfilled." It is not just physical separation from his brothers that Jesus is commandingly describing, not even just a difference in purpose or function, but a difference so cosmologically rooted that Jesus can only depict it with prophetic-like language, i.e. fulfilled, or fully come is what the New King James has. I'll try to summarize that here. Jesus is saying, You guys can't possibly grasp this. You can't possibly take this in. I'm talking about the fullness of times. I'm talking about all of history coming to a head in me and my ministry. For some helpful uses of this word elsewhere, consider Mark 1 15 and saying, the time is fulfilled. Same word. and the kingdom of God is at hand. The time is fulfilled and the kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel. Luke 4, 21. And he began to say to them, today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Ephesians 1, that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times, he might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth. You see the cosmic implications of what Jesus is saying here. There's cosmic significance in every step of what the Father is doing through His Son. Do you see that? Everything coming together in Jesus Christ. And further, He says, you go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast. That's interesting language. But watch this. Why not the feast, as they called it? Or why not feast of booths, feast of tabernacles? This is a part of the text we could easily pass over quickly and just give no attention to. But there is much glory in this choice of language, much glory for us. Look back to verse 2. John, as he has done before, qualifies his statement of what kind of tabernacle feast this was, of what kind of feast of tabernacles this was. Not just the feast of tabernacles, but the Jews' feast of tabernacles. You go up to this feast, the Jews feast. I go not yet to this feast. Seems he's making a distinction between feasts here. And I believe the reality that's being communicated is that they were going up to a dead feast. A feast that had no substance to it, that had no Christ in it. It wasn't God's feast which pointed to Christ that they celebrated. Their dead and lifeless and joyless religion, as we learned earlier on in the gospel, is again being called out. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. That's where they were going, while Jesus, who is the substance of the feast, He is the feast. is going up, but to a different feast, to a very different feast. Everything that they were to be thankful and joyful and expectant of was going up as the feast itself. God in the flesh tabernacling among men. Klink again says, the contrast Jesus makes suggests that there is a distinction between the Feast of Tabernacles and the true tabernacle, Jesus himself. If the natural union between Jesus and his brothers can be shown to have real distinctions, so also can the natural union between Jesus, the Jew, and Judaism be seen to have real distinctions. Said another way, just as the prologue foretold of the true brotherhood of the children of God, it also foretold of grace in place of grace, and the fulfillment of the things of Moses by the person of Jesus Christ. John 1 17, for the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. End quote. In verse 9, when he had said these things to them, he remained in Galilee. So Jesus remains and the brothers go up, which gives closer to the challenge that was laid against Jesus. The previous tension is resolved for the reader, but as we move forward, another difficulty is brought to the fore. Jesus said he wasn't going up, but now he goes up. But when his brothers had gone up, verse 10, then he also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. So the question now, is there a contradiction between verse 8 and verse 10? And we say there's not. One way we could understand it is to consider the timing. I go up not yet, which some take, but keeping, I believe, with our Yohanein irony and play on words. which is throughout the entirety of this gospel, with the Yohannine irony in play on words, I prefer what we've already considered. He is not going up to their feast, a feast altogether different from the feast he would bring. His arrival at this feast actually radically shifts the feast altogether. Think of it this way. Yesterday we went to my dad's 80th birthday party, and The planning and everything that went into that was to put all sorts of cardboard cutouts and poster boards up and have videos playing of some of the great moments that have been captured of his diving and gymnastics career. All of these things, collages, videos, t-shirts that commemorate decades of his coaching at his club. And you could go there and you could walk around and you could enjoy seeing all those things. But we know without a doubt that when John Tobler walks into the room, when he shows up and he begins to interact with all the people and begins to fill in details about this picture, about that picture, about that video, that it changes everything of this event. It wonderfully colors everything in a way that it could not before. Brothers and sisters, this is what is happening here as Jesus goes up to the Feast of Tabernacles. The substance, as we've said, Himself has come to the Feast, as the Feast Himself, as God's ultimate provision, as the longed-for tabernacling presence of God that was forfeited so long ago in the garden and has since been longed for and hoped for and believed. The joy and gladness of the new covenant are here in Jesus. There is glory and truth in all of these things that they had set up without a doubt. But a surpassing grace and glory and truth is right there. The substance himself is walking amongst the types and shadows of this festival. One commentator says, ironically, while the Jews were busy erecting their tabernacles in order to participate in the eschatological ceremonies of their God, God himself was tabernacling in the midst of his people. What a glorious consideration. Glorious reality. And the Jews sought him at the feast, verse 11, and said, where is he? All this, and he's missed by his own. As we've already been pointed to, the Jews are in a hostile search for Jesus, trying to catch Him. They again use the derogatory term, that one. Where is He? Where is that one? They're on a hunt for Him. 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. They say He's a good man, but the reader knows He is much more than a good man. Goodness itself in the flesh. Goodness itself is in the flesh, the source of all goodness. The goodness of Yahweh so touted and upheld in the Scriptures has become flesh to express the goodness of God like never before. But no one spoke openly of Him. However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews, the fear of man. Why won't they confess Jesus? Because they live before the face of men. They lived before the face of men. John 9.22 will pick up on this again. His parents said these things because they feared the Jews. For the Jews had agreed already that if anyone confessed that he was the Christ, he would be put out of the synagogue. They lived before men, and not before the face of God. If they lived before God's face, if they feared God, they would believe His Son. Because God's witness about them is true. Before God, what matters is faith and truth. but they only feared how men would think of what they said and did. They lived merely horizontal lives, which is a miserable life. And that's still our problem today, even for us as Christians. Oh, that we might live before God's face more, brothers and sisters, that we would live before God's face more. We would be more delighted and bold to confess Him before men. Even the most terrible of men would not frighten us. To conclude, we've seen once again the hardness of men's hearts, the hardness of our hearts, and His closest of kin mocking the One who is without sin, the One who is innocent. The light has exposed the darkness, it's magnified it, but that's not it. As we've mentioned, Jesus is here as the very remedy to this fallen condition. He's the heart surgeon. He's here to save, not just here to expose sin, but to be the lamb who takes away sin, to satisfy hungry souls with his very self, John 6, to fulfill everything that this feast of booths pointed to, God's dwelling among us, God's ultimate provision to fill the redeemed heart with joy and gladness and with his lasting presence. If this is you, if you believe in this Jesus, then believe afresh, cling to Jesus anew this day and this week, delight in your God and your Savior. If not, then today is a day of salvation. Forsake yourself and come to Jesus. He will by no means cast you out. He will not cast you out. No one who calls upon Him will be disappointed. Come to Him for the forgiveness of sins and for a new heart, a heart of flesh. Please pray with me. Our Father in heaven, thank you for this passage. Thank you for our Lord Jesus Christ and the glory of his person and his work. Give us views of him today, that we would have those views and embrace them by faith, that we would talk about them with one another, that you would, again, bless this Lord's day to the good of your people. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.