Welcome, one and all. It's day 26 on our 40-day tour through the Gospel of John.

We're up to John 12. We're going to cover verses 27 to 50 today. So go ahead and open your

Bibles there.

When I was in seventh grade, I was getting teased a lot by some of my friends.

And I think it was good natured for the most part.

But they found out that my dad was a pastor.

And so they teased me for being super religious and being in church, you know, every day, all day and doing all these things. And so in order to try to, you know, fit in with the world, my response was, it was ridiculous, but I said something like this. I said, well, yeah, my dad's a pastor, but, you know, he's a Lutheran, so it's not

like we're all in or something like that. Of course we're all in. I mean, Lutheran started the

whole Protestant Reformation. My dad was passionate about his faith, and underneath it all,

I was passionate about my faith, too. I just didn't want anyone to know it. I thought I could

kind of merge two different

things together. My faith in Jesus Christ with fitting in with the rest of the world, but that

never completely clicks. This is what's happening in John chapter 12. It's not just seventh grade

boys. It's the religious leaders in Jesus day, too.

It says in verse 42 of John 12 that they wouldn't admit that they believed in Jesus because some of

them did. Most of the religious leaders were rejecting Jesus because they wanted to hold on

to the status quo, their power and control, but it says here again that some of the religious

leaders believed in Jesus, but they wouldn't admit it for fear that the Pharisees would kick

them out of the synagogue. For they loved human praise, verse 43, more than the praise of God.

And that's the problem, isn't it? It's a temptation for all of us on

some level, in some season of life, where we have our faith, or maybe we do believe, but boy,

we sure don't want anyone to know it. We don't want to share it. And so we develop this

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