No One Ever Spoke Like This Man | John 7:40-52

If you have your Bibles with you, please turn in them to John chapter seven. I have a sinus infection. That’s where the tissues are for. John chapter seven. We’re going to be in verses 40 through 52 of John chapter seven. This will bring us to the end of chapter seven. Listen now as I read John chapter seven, verses 40 through 52.

When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him.

Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man.”

The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is a curse.” Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who is one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?”

They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

Let’s go to the Lord once more in prayer. Let’s pray.

O Lord God of might, inconceivable of glory, incomprehensible of mercy, immeasurable of goodness, ineffable. O Father, look down upon us in your tender love, and show forth towards us and those who pray with us your rich mercies and compassions. Now do this through the word of Christ for us today, by the power of your Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The philosopher Blaise Pascal once observed, “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Now, I think Pascal meant many things by that. I think he intended, however, to expose the fundamental human fear, and that one fundamental human fear is the fear of isolation.

Man by nature is a social being. We learn this from the garden. We learn this in Genesis two. God says, “It is not good that man should be alone.” Except in fellowship. These things in community are essential to human flourishing. Therefore, any threat to community, any threat to human belonging, is deeply feared by men and women. There’s just nothing more natural than that.

C.S. Lewis comments on this phenomenon in an essay titled “The Inner Ring.” And this is how he describes it, the human instinct to belong to that inner circle. He writes, “Of all the passions, the passion of the inner ring, and to belong to the inner ring is most skillful in making a man who is not yet a very bad man do very bad things.”

You can think of that inner ring, that social circle that you desire membership of, and how subtly, almost always, your relationship to that inner ring, the approval of that guild motivates your behavior. What you do and what you don’t do. The longing to be accepted, to be on the inside will make you say what you shouldn’t say, laugh when you shouldn’t laugh, and remain silent when righteousness demands you speak.

But rather than all of these dynamics are on pulsating, bright display in John seven. Look at verse 13. We see that for the fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. You had people that thought nice things about Jesus, people that even despised Jesus, but none of them even bothered to speak openly about him for fear of the exclusion of the Jewish community.

The Jewish authorities had the power to cast people out of the synagogue. Excommunication. It’s a fearsome reality. Excommunication from the synagogue meant far more than exclusion from worship. It meant exclusion from communal life itself. So throughout John’s Gospel and all of the gospel narratives, we see that fear of man is a bulwark against belief in Christ.

And not just first saving faith in Christ, but keeping faith in Christ and progressing faith in Christ. We see fear of man is not just a challenge to unbelievers. It is a challenge to believers as well. In John nine, the parents of a man born blind deny their very own son, their flesh and blood, because the text says the fear of the Jews. They feared man.

They fear the withering gaze of the inner ring. In John 12, even believing authorities, the text says, refuse to confess Christ for fear of the Pharisees. So, brethren, the question emerges for us: what protects us from the fear of man?

What will so ground us? Our confidence in the face of that very same fear? Well, we learn about what grounds us in our attacks, and it is a warm-hearted knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. I’m going to have three points this morning.

Point One: The Galilee Discrepancy

Look at verse 40. When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee?” You see the divergent views developing.

You have some people saying, “Is this the Prophet?” I talked about this in the class today. Something that we see promised in the Mosaic covenant is a prophet like Moses will arise among the people of God. He’s going to be a righteous man. And many Jews in the first century believed that this was some sort of eschatological figure distinct from the Messiah.

So for many first-century Jews, the prophet who was like Moses, this person, often ambiguously referred to as “the Prophet,” was not the Christ, the Messiah, the King that was to come. That was a different person, a different figure. And then there are some people that are waiting for the Christ. So you have some people saying, “Oh, this guy might be the prophet like Moses that’s to come.” Other people saying, “No, no, no, this is the Christ.”

And we see this very same expectation in John 1. You remember when the Jews approached John the Baptist, and here he is, that voice crying out in the wilderness. He’s preaching a baptism of repentance. And they’re saying, “That looks like some of the figures that have been prophesied.”

You remember John 1 says this: the Jews asked him, “Who are you?” And John the Baptist’s confession did not deny, but confessed, “I am not the Christ.” And then they ask him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” He said, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet?” And they answered, “No.” So some of the people in John 7, they think Jesus might be the Prophet. They might be the Christ.

We on this side of salvation history know that Jesus is both of those things. He’s great David’s greater son. He’s the seed that will crush the serpent’s head. Jesus is the seed of Abraham that will bless the nations. Jesus is the prophet who’s greater than Moses. He’s great David’s greater son. He’s the suffering servant who bears the weight of our sins.

Jesus is everything. All of these figures find their culmination in him. But then we see this sort of third party and they’re wondering, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee?” These people are skeptics. Verse 41 says, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” So there was a division among the people over him.

Friends, what I want us to notice here is that this party, these Jews, they have tunnel vision on what I’m calling the Galilee discrepancy. And what that means is that they seize on one single, confusing, befuddling data point and elevate it above everything else. And they let this one discrepancy—which actually is very easy to explain away—but they let this one sort of thing that doesn’t quite add up blind them to who Jesus is.

This leads them to deny the Lord’s entire Messiahship. Later in verse 52, we see the same thing among the Pharisees. They say, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

We need to see a few things. First, this is actually, fundamentally and foremost a distortion of logic. The Jews are trying to think logically, but they’re actually not thinking that logically. The Scripture never says that the Christ will not come from Galilee. The Scriptures never say he’ll never spend time in Galilee or grow up in Nazareth. The Scriptures never say that. Rather, the Scriptures say something very specific. And that’s he’s going to come from Bethlehem, the city of David.

We sing that song of Christmas, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” That was a prophecy in Micah 5:2. The Christ, the Messiah, is going to come from Bethlehem. And because of that, they think, well, he can’t in any meaningful way be from anywhere else. So their logic goes like this: Jesus is from Galilee. That’s premise one. Jesus is from Galilee. Premise two: the Messiah must come from Bethlehem. Therefore, ergo, conclusion: Jesus is not the Messiah.

My friends, that appears to be a sound, logical syllogism. However, it fails to take into account a basic human phenomenon. Some people move. Some people live in more than one place throughout their lifetime. Jesus was from Bethlehem, and also he was from Galilee. Jesus was born in the city of David, and also he was a Nazarene. He grew up in the town of Nazareth. His father was a known carpenter there. Jesus was both of those things.

I’m just noticing this now. I have this thermos here. It has a South Carolina bumper sticker. This is the closest you’ll ever get to a visual illustration in a Trinity Church sermon. That’s because I’m from South Carolina. But you may have heard me say elsewhere, “I’m from Florida.” And guess what? I’m not a liar because I am from South Carolina. I lived ten years of my life from the ages of 12 to 21, and I also grew up in South Florida. I’m in very many ways a Floridian. Which identity has more claim on my life? I don’t know, it’s not important, but the reality is two truths can be true at the same time.

But the Jews at that, they’re clinging onto this discrepancy to say he cannot be the Messiah because he’s from Galilee. We know his mommy and daddy. We know his father was a carpenter. He must not be the Messiah. In their tunnel vision on this Galilee distraction blinded them to consider the whole picture of Jesus’ identity. This single discrepancy blinded them to everything else.

Now, friends, for some of them, I think this was sincere confusion. And the reality is, when you encounter people in your life that have sincere objections to Christ, it doesn’t mean they’re good objections to Christ, but they really hold on to them. You should address them sincerely and you should seek to dismantle them sincerely.

I think for others, this was a disingenuous excuse for rejecting Christ. You need to know the difference in the unbelievers in your life. I made this point a couple of weeks ago. As we see often a motivating reasoning among unbelievers in the arguments they use to reject Jesus Christ. Often that skeptic in your life doesn’t have reasonable objections to the claims of Christianity. He ultimately just wants to do what he wants to do. Pastorally, in my experience, I find that is the case nine times out of ten.

That college student who didn’t discover a bulletproof argument against Christianity—he simply loves the world. That friend who grew up in the church didn’t uncover some fatal flaw in the faith—she simply grew tired of repentance. Often the heart leads us to develop some sort of adverse opinion to the Christian faith.

So what does this have to do with us? And what should we derive from this from the church, this Galilee discrepancy? I say this, brothers and sisters: do not be blinded by shiny objects. Don’t be blinded by shiny objects in your walk with God. What do I mean? Brethren, I fear far too many Christians have a faith that cannot last the winter because they’ve made no effort to ground themselves in Christ and the truth of his word.

So I refer to people who are so vulnerable in their knowledge of the Bible, or their friendship and communion with God, or their connection to the church, that they crumble as soon as they encounter their own Galilee discrepancy. We see this all the time among Christian people. In the case of the Jews, it was this spurious spiritual, biblical argument from silence. But many of our discrepancies are different.

So your discrepancy might be a paper-thin philosophical or intellectual objection to the Christian faith. More often than not, it will probably be some sort of life challenge or moral/aesthetic objection you encounter. Those are often the Galilee discrepancies for the people of God. Some sort of life challenge or moral objection that usually leads us to deny the truth of God’s Word.

Let me give three specific examples. I could give a hundred. Here are three examples.

Example one: A Christian who has a bad church experience—so-called “church hurt”—and therefore they reject finding a church entirely. I see that among professing Christians so often, and it’s a denial of a basic command of the Word of God. You are to belong among a manifestation of the people of God we call a local church. It’s required. You must not neglect the assembling of God’s people. That’s the church. You are to have elders and you are to have church authority that you obey.

I’m not saying that because I’m a pastor and I belong to a church. I’m saying that just what the Bible shows. So you as a Christian, if you don’t belong to a church, you have to ask yourself, how do I obey Christ in this area when I don’t even have the capacity to obey Christ because I’m not a part of a church? But many people because they encountered a discrepancy where some church was mean to them one time, they think I shouldn’t be a part of a church.

Or maybe I’m not talking about, oh, they just imagine abuse or they imagine mistreatment. Sometimes churches do horrendous things. Sometimes pastors and Christians do unimaginably wicked things to other people, and sometimes they don’t truly know the Lord. Sometimes they’re just not a complete picture yet. So I’m not saying abuses in the church don’t exist, but I’m saying God’s law is true yesterday, today, and forever. We are to submit to the Lord and to bring ourselves into the fellowship of a local church. And we must not use what is a discrepancy—the people of God not being what they should be—as an excuse to not be a part of a local church.

Let me give you another example. A Christian girl goes off to college and discovers that unbelievers are capable of being really nice. In particular, she meets a number of people in her classes and social circle who identify as gay and transgender. And these people, they’re not monsters. They’re humane. They’re kind. And she wonders to herself, “Must I conclude that these people were made in the image of God, and would I say they have no control over their sexuality? That I have to say that they live a life fundamentally incompatible with Christ? These people are kind. These people are sweet. These people are likable. Surely they don’t deserve the judgment of God.”

You see the discrepancy? This doesn’t add up. And this leads this young girl to doubt the goodness of God’s character and the truth of the gospel itself.

Now, young people, let me talk to you just for a moment. If you’re a youth, middle school or high schooler, if you’ve not encountered what I just described, you’re going to encounter that one day or not. It’s just going to happen in your life. You’re going to meet people who seem relatively moral on the outside that want nothing to do with Christ, that do not repent of their sins, are not enjoined to the people of God. They don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. They make no claim to Christianity, and they’ll be people who behave well out there in the world. And you need to ask yourself, what are you going to do when you encounter such people?

You see, the world almost never says, “Hey, we’re bad. Will you join us in our badness, kids?” You understand that? The world doesn’t say, “Hey, join us in our smoke-filled rooms as we twirl our mustaches and worship the Antichrist.” They don’t do that. Drink the blood of virgins and howl at the moon. They don’t do that. Now, the Bible says that the devil is a prowling lion, and he’s a prowling, prowling lion that you’ll rarely hear growl until he devours you.

Rather the devil, the Bible says, clothes himself as an angel of light. He will pluck at your heartstrings. He will appeal to your instincts to show empathy. He will try to present himself and the world’s morality as actual morality. How will you stand in that day? What are you going to do when you’re challenged like that? Satan and the world will appeal to your morality. Satan, the world would tempt you to doubt God. Satan and the world will seek to co-opt your Christian love for the world to get you to affirm their own defiance of God.

Third example: A Christian couple who endures the searing grief of child loss. This crushing trial leads them to doubt the providence and goodness of God. “How can a good God allow something like this to happen to me?”

Christian, if you’ve not endured something like that, you more than likely will. And if you do not have a robust view of God’s sovereignty, you will not make it through those trials. A vague, shallow belief that God is in control will not hold you fast in the day of trouble. Our calling is to trust the God who knows the end from the beginning, because he has planned the end from the beginning. And any confidence less than this is vulnerable to wilt under the slightest pressure.

So we consider point number one, the Galilee discrepancy. Let us not be distracted by such things from the glory and the richness of Jesus Christ.

Point Two: An Appeal to Respectability

Verse 45. The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man.”

Evidently these officers who were charged to arrest Jesus could not, because they recognized him to be a good man. They say, “No one ever spoke like him.” Now, I think these men were believers. I’ll say more on that later. But for now, notice the indignation of the Pharisees and notice how they seek to appeal to the instinct of the officers.

Verse 47. The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? But this crowd that does not know the law is a curse.”

There are at least two things we should notice here. First, the Pharisees believe, as earlier expressed, that Jesus is from Nazareth, and thus he cannot be Messiah—or at least that’s their claim. Whether they sincerely believe that or think that or not. The second thing is more important. The Pharisees are indignant that the officers are more compelled by the uneducated crowd than the Pharisees.

To say that I think better is they’re more compelled by Jesus, whose following is mostly comprised of uneducated, unimportant people than they are by the authorities and the Pharisees. They’re making a false appeal to respectability, to authority. Their point is to shame the officers into denying Jesus because of the lowliness of his followers and converts. “How can you believe in this man? Where are the VIPs that follow him? The specials? The authorities? Where are the Pharisees? Where are the educated? Where are the Harvard graduates? The men of science and learning that believe in Jesus? No, it’s just this dumb crowd. And they’re actually a curse.” And that’s a meaningful word. It means anathema. These people are damned. They’re separated from God. “That’s the crowd you want to roll with? Go follow that man.”

Now, friends, I think there’s two things we should observe from this text. Or two things I want to say about this text. I want to say what this text does not promote and what this text does promote.

First, this text does not promote antagonism towards authority and elites. Like I just want to wave that banner like some people just have this sort of “don’t tread on me” instinct. “I don’t listen to no man.” That’s not particularly godly. No, authority is a wonderful thing in the world. It’s a wonderful thing in the nation. It’s a wonderful thing in the family. It’s a wonderful thing in the Christian life, in the church. This text does not promote antagonism or defiance of authority and elites.

Abraham was a wealthy man who exerted tremendous influence because of his wealth and status. Listen to what King David says at the end of his life. What he says about authority and a king who rules justly. This is just an awesome text. He says, “When one rules justly over men, ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes grass to sprout from the earth.” It’s like an Augusta National green. It’s just beautiful. That’s what good authority is like to King David. It’s like a sun in a cloudless sky.

One of the reasons why the apostle Paul was uniquely situated to be such a fruitful apostle was because he had the privilege and the elite status of a Roman citizen, and he had an impeccable education and Jewish pedigree that helped him preach the gospel.

Brethren, according to the Bible, authority, though potentially dangerous, is good and necessary. Show me happy children, and I will show you good parents. There’s a reason kids tend to want to go over to the house with a good mom and dad. A chaotic marriage and family structure breed unrest in children. Show me happy citizens and I will show you a just government.

America is not without her flaws, but there’s a reason why millions of people from all over the world clamor to get across American borders. It’s because, for all intents and purposes, and relative to other nations, we have a just government and a happy citizenry. And the inverse is true wherever leaders abuse or negate their power. Abuse of authority and corrupt authority damage people.

Yet the solution to scandals and bad authority, whether in the family, the church or the state, is not the abolition of authority. As Christians, we shouldn’t reject leaders. Neither should we default to distrusting them. Rather, Christians should bless God for healthy leaders and authority figures wherever they find them.

So, brethren, you see, the problem with the Pharisees was not their status. The problem with the Pharisees was not their education or their knowledge, but their blindness, their refusal to receive Jesus Christ. They actually had an impediment to their knowledge. They didn’t read their Bibles closely enough. We sometimes think like the Pharisees are the law people, and we don’t want to be like the law people. And Jesus is the grace guy, and we want to be like Jesus.

No, no, we love the law. The Pharisees didn’t love the law nearly enough. They didn’t read their Bible closely enough. If they studied Micah 5:2, they would have known this: Jesus is from Bethlehem, and they learned Jesus’s genealogy. They would have known that this is the Son of David. This is the Christ. “No one speaks like this man. No one has authority like this man. No one ministers to people like this man.” Meanwhile, one of the ways that God shames the world and demonstrates his power is by lavishing grace on unimpressive people.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 1: “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? Consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards. Not many were powerful. Not many were of noble birth.”

So, brethren, I say this text does not promote antagonism towards authority, but rather, as I just read, this text promotes humble trust in Jesus Christ in the face of a mocking world. Humble trust in Jesus Christ in the face of a mocking world.

It appears these officers, they’re ultimately unfazed by the insults of the preening Pharisees. Nobody arrests Jesus. He gets away because these officers believed in him. They recognize who Jesus was, and though their faith was an infant faith, they could not be coerced to seize this man. You see, brethren, a faithful Christian doesn’t put his finger in the wind and then act accordingly. He does what is right in the eyes of God, regardless of what the world views as right and respectable.

We as the people of God should be like Moses, who the Bible says he didn’t need to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. He forsook the riches of Egypt. He chose instead the reproaches of Christ. Alignment with the Lord’s anointed, his people. And you know what it says. It says he was seeking a God who is invisible. He didn’t care about the preening, judgmental-ism of the Egyptians. He didn’t care about their opinion in relation and in comparison to the unseen gaze of his heavenly Father. That’s what Christian people do to guard against the fear of man.

J.C. Ryle comments on this. He says, “Heart knowledge we must always remember, is the one thing needful. It is something which schools and universities cannot confer. It is the gift of God to find out the plague of our own hearts and hate sin, to become familiar with the throne of grace and the fountain of Christ’s blood, to sit daily at the feet of Jesus and humbly learn of him. This is the highest degree of knowledge to which mortal man can attain. Let anyone think God who knows anything of these things. He may be ignorant of Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and mathematics, but he shall be saved.”

Brethren, before we move on to the next point, I want to say in light of this, we should flee the sin of respectability. Now you should want to be respectable. In fact, one of the qualifications for an elder is that he should be respectable. So I would say young men or older men: if you aspire to be a pastor, one of the things that you should be, especially among the people of God, is respectable. And even outsiders should see a morality and something worth following about your way of life.

But there’s a type of respectability that we should scorn. By the sin of respectability, I refer to this as the subversive need to be seen as impressive or intelligent to others, rather than honorable in God’s sight. Now, those two things are not always in conflict, but they very often are. The desire to be impressive and smart in the world’s eyes, relative to pleasing God.

But Christian, understand this: Satan will seek to convince you that Jesus isn’t much. Almost the world thinks much of him. “Where are the authorities and intellectuals that believe in him? Where are the celebrities? You shouldn’t follow Jesus because shiny, smart, special people don’t follow him.”

One of the sad things, friends, is that the church so often believes this lie. The church is constantly seeking respectability in the eyes of the world. One way the church often falls prey to this is the way we so pathetically fawn over celebrities who profess faith in Jesus Christ. I’m not saying we should view every profession of faith with suspicion. If it’s an important or celebrated person out there in the world. I’m not saying we should just be have our hands crossed, one eyebrow above the other, anytime somebody makes nice sounds about Jesus. But we should not be fools either.

There’s a growing movement—it’s becoming fashionable in this cultural moment. Maybe you’ve noticed this—to be Roman Catholic and to be seen with a cross on Ash Wednesday on your head, and to go to church on Easter. There’s a fashionability that’s emergent and ascendant to go into traditional church. But friends, unless that comes with true repentance, true faith, true acts of obedience, true distinction from the world, we should not receive that. And we should only recognize true faith as true faith. Do not be fooled by excitement over big names making nice sounds about Jesus. I’m not saying we should be unduly suspicious whenever an athlete or politician or prominent person makes a profession, but oftentimes when we drool over trophy converts, this is the problem: we magnify, not the grace of God. Rather, we’re subtly implying that God’s grace is not enough and we need something the world will find impressive. “Look, even this person believes in Jesus Christ that you like.”

Friends, don’t fall for that. So this is the appeal to respectability.

Point Three: True Faith in Infancy

We see this, I believe, in the officers, and I believe we continue to see it in Nicodemus.

Look at verse 50. Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who is one of them, said to them, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.”

We’ve met Nicodemus before. We meet Nicodemus in John 3. You can turn over to John 3, or you can listen as I read it in a moment. We actually meet Nicodemus a little bit before John 3. I think we meet Nicodemus at the end of John 2. John 2, verse 23. Jesus has turned water into wine in Cana. He’s just cleansed the temple. And it talks about people who are beginning to have faith in Jesus Christ. Listen to what the end of John 2 says.

Verse 23: “Now when he was in Jerusalem at the Passover feast, many believed in his name when they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part did not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people, and he needed no one to bear witness about man, for he himself knew what was in man. Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.”

Nicodemus was one of these men that made some sort of profession, showed some sort of sign of faith in Jesus, some sort of allegiance and interest in him. But we see at the end of John 2, Jesus recognized the vast majority of these people. They did not actually know him. Theirs was a spurious faith. Theirs was an unformed faith. Some of them it was sincere, but they didn’t really have all the facts and truths aligned yet. Some of them it was just following Jesus for the signs.

Nicodemus believed in Jesus when he saw the signs. He had a sincere interest in the Lord. He had a type of faith in Jesus. “No one says these things unless he is sent from God,” he says to Jesus. But the problem with Nicodemus is he did not know himself, nor did he actually know Christ. But Jesus knew Nicodemus because Jesus knew Nick, and he saw his heart. And seeing his heart, he knew his need and knowing his need, he loved him.

And he said to him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, you must be born again. And unless one is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. You need a new heart, Nicodemus. You need love for my law. You need the forgiveness of sins. You don’t understand your own depravity. You need a savior. You need that serpent in the wilderness that the people of God needed in Exodus, and just the way they looked to that serpent and were healed from their poisonous bites. You can have salvation through faith in me, as the Son of Man is lifted up. Looking to him on the cross, Jesus satisfied the wrath of God. You can have your sins forgiven. Look to me, Nicodemus, and live, and you’ll have the Spirit of God. You’ll have living water. You’ll have the bread of life. You’ll have your soul satisfied. I’ll forgive you of your sins if you come to me in faith.”

The Lord had dealings with Nicodemus in that upper room, and it changed the rest of his life. I don’t know where Nicodemus actually came to saving knowledge. It might have been in that conversation with Jesus. We don’t know for sure. I think by the time you get to John 7, you see a man who is really beginning to show an actual change of life, and not everything is worked out. Not every aspect of repentance is figured out. He’s not yet seen Jesus die. He’s not yet seen him rise from the dead. But there is a beginning of an allegiance to him.

He says, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” That’s verse 51. Verse 51 is significant for two reasons. I want to just say one of those reasons as an aside. This is why, this is one of the foundation cornerstones of what Judeo-Christian legal theory calls due process. If you ever wonder why people use that phrase “Judeo-Christian,” it’s because a lot of Anglo-American law finds its foundation and connection to case law that we see in the Bible, in Deuteronomy.

Not every nation has the standard of innocent until proven guilty. In fact, many nations have the standard of guilty until proven innocent. Well, we have the standard of innocent until proven guilty because of Jewish case law. So Jesus, or rather Nicodemus, is really just quoting the book of Deuteronomy here. Deuteronomy 17:6: “On the evidence of two or three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death. A person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness.” Deuteronomy 19:15: “A single witness shall not suffice against a person for any crime or for any wrong in connection with any offense that he has committed.”

It’s one reason why verse 51 is important. But there’s another, much more important reason. Brethren, I believe this showed an enormous amount of growth in Nicodemus in light of the penetrating, withering hostility of the Jews.

I highlighted at the beginning of this message the extraordinary power of the Pharisees. Fear of the Jews was the dominant motivation for all behavior. It was the North Star. Their acceptance, their disapproval. We see this in the life of Nicodemus in John 3. He would only see Jesus by the cover of nightfall. By John 19, something has happened to him. After the Lord’s death, he publicly aligns himself with Christ. He brings 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes. That’s a sum worth about $1 million in today’s dollars. The price of a king’s burial.

So the question for us is: what changed in Nicodemus? What changed in his life? Once I believe Nicodemus recognized the truth of the officer’s confession: “No one ever spoke like this man.”

Something different about Jesus. It’s not different from Peter’s confession at the end of John 6: “Where else shall we go? You alone have the words of life, and we have come to believe that you are the Christ. You are the Son of God.” Nicodemus said, “No one else speaks like this man. No one else heals like this man. No one else speaks with such authority like this man. No one else can forgive sin but this man because he’s the Son of God, and therefore I’m following him. We need to give him a fair trial.”

We began this sermon considering those things in Christian experience that challenged Christian faith. I ask you to consider: what’s your Galilee discrepancy? The thing that challenges your trust in the Word of God. The thing that challenges your love for Jesus Christ. The thing that challenges your relationship with the people of God.

Friends, what can bring light out of unimaginable grief? What can comfort in job loss, illness, death of loved ones? It’s the officer’s confession: “No one ever spoke like this man.” “Where else shall we go?” This is not the language of settling for the best among bad options. It’s the language of those who have tasted and seen that the Lord is good, who know that he has the words of life, that he forgave sins, that he brings us near to God, and that he will be with us to the end as our everlasting friend.

Do you know this Jesus? For no one else can do what this Jesus does. No one else can save you from your sins. There is no other name under heaven by which men and women can be saved. No one else rises from the dead like this Jesus. No one else can satisfy the wrath of God like this Jesus.

Do you know this Jesus, my friend? You know this Jesus. Children, do you know this Jesus? You know you can know this Jesus. He offers himself to you now. He calls on all people to come to him. Listen to me. Receive the words of life. “Anyone who thirsts, come to the water and drink. Anyone who hungers, come, buy bread without price. If you’re unclothed, come to me. Shoes for your feet. I’ll give you a cloak. I’ll give you wealth.” This is what Jesus provides. Oh, it’s not a physical wealth. It’s a wealth that lasts forever. It’s a wealth that springs from the Spirit of God that dwells on into eternity, eternal life with him. Jesus offers himself to you now. Would you receive him?

Let’s pray.

Father, we thank you that no one has ever spoken like this man, Jesus Christ. No one speaks like him still. And we know he speaks today. Minister to us now. Help us to make the same appraisal that these officers made, O Lord. Face the expulsion of the crowd and our friends and those authorities and circles we love for the sake of a greater prize: knowing the Lord Jesus Christ.

Would it please everybody within the sound of my voice to come to this saving knowledge today? We ask your blessing in Jesus’ name. Amen.