Stan Telchin, a successful Jewish businessman, felt betrayed when his daughter, Judy, twenty-one, called home from college to say, “I believe Jesus is the Messiah.” To prove his daughter wrong, Telchin began an energetic quest for truth. So did Stan’s wife, Ethel, and their other daughter, Ann. When the search created friction between Stan and Ethel, they agreed to pursue their studies independently. Months later, Stan accepted an invitation to attend a National Convocation of Messianic Jews. He planned to “work the convention” just like any other business, meeting with anyone he thought could help him.

After a series of meetings, Stan lay awake in his dorm room, realizing he had arrived at a point of crisis. If the Bible was true—and he had concluded it was—then he really did believe in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He also admitted that he believed in the Bible as God’s inspired Word. But he couldn’t quite say, “Jesus is the Messiah.” He asked his roommate to pray for him. Art obliged, praying simply, “God, give Stan your peace, and resolve his inner conflict.”

The next morning at breakfast, a man at Stan’s table asked him to pray before the meal. Startled by the request, Stan bowed his head and said: “Praised be Thou, O Lord our God, King of the universe. I thank you for the fellowship and the friendship at this table. I thank you for what we have learned at this meeting. I ask you now to bless this food, and I do so … in the name of Jesus, the Messiah.”

For a moment, he sat there, amazed at what he had just prayed. The faces of others at the table were suddenly jubilant. “Stan,” said one of them, “you’re a believer!” One by one they got up from their seats and hugged Stan. Several cried with joy. Stan began to weep too. He wasn’t sure how his wife would take the news, but he called her, blurting out, “Ethel, honey, it’s me. It’s over. I’ve made my decision. Jesus is the Messiah!” There was a pause on the other line as Stan held his breath, and he could hear his wife begin to cry on the other side of the line before finally saying softly, “Thank God! That makes it unanimous. We’ve all been waiting for you.”

Stan’s entire family—his wife and both daughters—had come to believe in Jesus as the Christ and Messiah, in recent years…And each of them had been praying and waiting, patiently, for the Holy Spirit of God to draw Stan to saving faith in Jesus, as well.

And what you see in this true story of a faithful orthodox Jew and his family’s prayers for him to come to know and believe in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Messiah, Savior, and Son of God, is the reality of what Jesus himself has been teaching in John’s Gospel since all the way back in chapter 3…
 

1. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (John 3:3)

2. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” (John 3:5)

3. “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.” (John 3:7)

4. “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.” (John 6:37)

5. “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.” (John 6:44)

6. “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:65)

 
Salvation—believing in the witness God has borne about his Son in Scripture in both the OT and NT, that he is the Messiah, Savior, Lord, and King that God promised to send to rescue people from their sin, is a work that God alone by his Spirit can do in the hearts/minds of unbelieving sinners who left on their own are incapable of believing in him…

And Stan’s family recognized that—which is why they prayed fervently and patiently for God to do the work that he alone could do in Stan’s heart/mind—and he did do it! And that kind of unbelief—particularly from a devout and faithful Jew, is not unlike the story that is unfolding before our eyes with the increasingly hostile and hard-hearted responses to Jesus, from these devout and zealous, and faithful, “believing” Jewish religious leaders and crowds of people in this long discourse in John 8…

They knew the OT—the Law—many of them—especially the scribes and Pharisees and religious elite—were not only experts in it—but had it memorized. They believed in God. They believed in the God of the OT. They believed God, Yahweh, alone is God, and that he is one (Deut 6:4). They believed God was the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob. They believed a lot of truth about God, that God had revealed about himself and his relationship with his people Israel, in the OT Scriptures…

But it wasn’t enough. Their belief was insufficient because it was based upon a misunderstanding of God’s law and the means through which he promised to save his people—it was by their trusting faith in God’s promises and God’s word that he would save his people—a faith proleptically pointing to the coming Messiah, Christ—not their obedience to his Law.

And as they continue staring God’s promised Messiah face to face, hearing a new authoritative kind of teaching and new revelation such as they’ve never heard before—and witnessing all the miraculous signs God has produced to prove that he is him, what is their conclusion—what is their response to Jesus and God’s witness in him?

“You are a liar—a joke—a dog, a Samaritan—a demon-possessed, mad man!” And then they pick up stones to finally be rid of this worthless, dog, and demon-possessed, Samaritan. Their response is a sobering picture and supreme example of the reasons why many—most people today, willfully and whole-heartedly reject Jesus as the Son and Savior of God.

He’s a liar and he’s a lunatic so he can’t be Lord—like the famous paradigm of options that C.S. Lewis popularized: He’s a liar because I don’t believe what he claims about himself being God is true. He’s a lunatic for making such outlandish claims. Therefore, he can’t be who he claims to be, Lord.

…But he cannot simply be a mere man and good moral teacher. He didn’t give us that option, and that we see once again sublimely, profoundly, and explicitly for the first time on Jesus’ own lips in John’s Gospel: “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” The question is: which one of these is he to you?