You desire to be known, so you must show yourself. ‘If thou do these things, shew thyself to the world.
What does that tell us, dear friends? It tells us the extraordinary hardness of the human heart. But they no doubt loved him, within the family. He was the perfect brother, the perfect elder brother, the perfect person. They no doubt respected him and regarded him. They were amazed during his ministry at all the things that he could do. But they still did not grasp or take seriously and accept the things that he preached. It is the amazing hardness of the human heart and reluctance of the human mind to accept these things. It is the same with us. I have known people, and they have grown up in Christian families, and they have been instructed in Sunday Schools. They have seemed to understand a good deal as children and youth, but they have gone away from God and from the Lord, and you meet them and talk to them in their 30s and 40s, and they seem to remember nothing. You cannot say, ‘Oh well, this person is instructed and knows a certain amount’; you find it has all gone. They never really absorbed it, never really took it in. It is possibly true with you. What is this all about? What is this about the need of salvation? About God and our unacceptability to him, his great perfection and holiness, and we are full of sin and far away, and we need a Saviour, that Christ came, the eternal Son of God to bear the punishment of sin for those who would be drawn to him and would repent and believe. What is that all about? You feel no need, no desire. You love this present world. So it was with the brothers of Christ.