YE WILL NOT COME TO ME.
John 5:39-47.
JOHN 5:39-40. “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think that ye have eternal life: and they are they that testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.”
The Jewish leadership thought that they had mastered the scriptures. “In them,” argued Jesus, “ye think ye have eternal life.”
Did they not realise that the scriptures are “they which testify of” Jesus?
The problem was not in their knowledge, but in their will. “Ye will not come to me.” This stubbornness is the cause of so many people not entering into salvation. They refused to “come” to Him, that they “might have life.”
JOHN 5:41. “I receive not honour from men.”
The reason for Jesus coming into the world was not to receive “honour from men,” but to save those who are lost.
JOHN 5:42. “But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in you.”
The word is, literally, “I have known you.” Jesus had borne long with the unbelief of the Jewish leadership. ‘Woe unto you Pharisees,’ says Jesus elsewhere, ‘for ye pass over judgment, and the LOVE OF GOD’ (Luke 11:42).
It is a humbling thought, that Jesus knows what is in the heart of man (cf. John 2:24-25).
JOHN 5:43. “I am come in my Father’s name, and ye receive me not: if another shall come in his own name, him will ye receive.”
Jesus pointed His hearers away from the merely human to the divine. They professed to love God, and to honour God: but they rejected Jesus, the Son, who came in His Father’s name.
If a man-made pretender to the title of Messiah turned up, exalting himself and trying to get honour to himself, him they would receive. Antichrist still lurks in the wings, waiting to come onstage!
JOHN 5:44. “How can ye believe which receive honour one of another, and seek not the honour that cometh from God only?”
‘From God only’ is more literally, “from the only God.”
For those who claim to worship the one true God to honour one another with all sorts of high-sounding titles is something of a mockery. The fault is that the praise of man replaces the praise of God.
Religion without Christ is man-pleasing rather than God honouring.
The answer to the question posed in this verse (John 5:44) is ‘ye cannot believe’ because “ye will not come to me” (John 5:40).
JOHN 5:45-47. “Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?”
Not to believe in Jesus, Jesus told the Jewish leadership, is not to believe Moses, “for he wrote of me.”
Remember how Jesus ‘beginning at Moses’ expounded ‘in all the scriptures’ the things concerning Himself (Luke 24:27; cf. Luke 24:44). The whole Old Testament is pointing forward to our Lord Jesus Christ.
