A man told a story once about the unexpected lesson his friend had learned about the power of experiencing or seeing something firsthand or as close as possible to that—up close and personal—which compels you to except that thing which you have experienced as true—compared to secondhand information—simply hearing information about something…His friend would never wear a seat belt in the car. So he berated his friend for it, constantly, \”why don’t you ever wear your seatbelt, it’s unsafe?!\”

Then one day his friend picked him up at the airport and to the man’s surprise, he noticed that he had his seat belt on secured, and fastened properly. So he asks him, \”You’re wearing your seat belt, what happened? What changed your mind?\” And his friend says, \”I went to visit a friend of mine in the hospital who was in a terrible car accident, so horrific that he went through the windshield. He had two or three hundred stitches in his face. So I said to myself from that moment, ‘I’d better wear my seat belt.’\”

And the man says to him, \”But did you not know that if you did not wear your seat belt you would go through the windshield if you had an accident, too?\” \”Of course I knew that,\” he said.\”When I went to the hospital to see my friend, I didn’t receive any new information, but the information I had became new to me. The information I already knew to be true, finally sank into my mind and my heart personally and it became real and true and it changed the way I live my life.\”

And I think that reality—the power of personally experiencing something up close and personal—face to face—and seeing it with your eyes—is at least part of the reason why Jesus’ brothers in our text this morning seek to compel him to go up to Jerusalem, now, when hundreds of thousands of Jews are flocking there for the festival of Tabernacles…I think they believe that once the crowds of people there see Jesus’ awesome miraculous power and hear his undeniably authoritative message—many will come to believe in him. The irony is that Jesus’ own brothers themselves at this point, still do not believe in him…

They believe something about him—but they don’t believe in him—which means they do not yet understand or know the truth about his identity as the Son of God to accept and believe in him and his mission, by faith. And what an irony that is…That his brothers…who have seen and experienced Jesus demonstrate the divine power of God he yields up close and personal for upwards of 2.5 years, still remain blind to the truth about his person and work—which is to say, they do not believe—and yet they think that if Jesus goes to Jerusalem to put on a show, the people there somehow will believe!

But Jesus knows that’s not how faith works. It’s a gift of God that he sovereignly chooses to grant to some, and not to others, and yet Jesus goes anyways, and what do the people end up believing about him?! \”He’s a good man!\” \”No, he’s leading people astray!\”

And so the question this morning is for us is, what do you believe about Jesus?! What conclusion have you come to about the nature of his identity?! Do you believe like Jesus’ brothers—who at best at this point see him as perhaps a kind of Messiah figure—an anointed leader for Israel—certainly not the Messiah and Anointed One?! Do you believe he was a good man?! Do you believe he was a deceiver?! Or do you believe he was neither of these things—something else—but not the right something else?!

Who is Jesus Christ to you?!\” is the most important question you could ever answer because your eternal destiny depends upon your answer to that question of questions—and the only answer to that question that can guarantee your salvation and entrance into the kingdom of God is not unlike Paul’s hypothetical confessor in Romans 10:9, \”I confess with my mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in my heart that God raised him from the dead,\” because if you confess and believe that, you will be saved.