Clough John Lesson 36

The Real Jesus and Division – John 7:10-31

Let’s go through some of the memory verses from John 1-3. For John 1, remembering as we have done with the Matthew series, 1 will be designated by T or D, and the code letter for the Gospel of John is F so for John 1 we get foot; in Mr. Lucas’ system we relate the image of the foot to the two topics of John, one which would be the Word and one is John the Baptist. And so you recall the foot with words and then a foot baptizing people for the rest of it, so that should anchor it in your mind as to what the content is of John 1. In John 2 we have the letter N connected with 2 because and F and from that we get fan and we related that to the two topics of John 2 which was the wedding feast and Jesus cleaning out the temple, two fans getting married and Jesus Christ using a fan to clean out the temple. Again ridiculous associations last and so from John 3 we have the word F and for 3 we have the word M and we get the word foam, and so the topic of John 3 is new birth by the Holy Spirit and Jesus Christ increasing or decreasing and here we have the symbol for the Holy Spirit, the dove, bringing a baby up out of the foam and here we have the cross emerging from the foam with John the Baptist getting buried up. So ridiculous picture but again to memorize the content of 3; if you can do this by yourself because if you’re acquainted with Scripture do it but however you do it start to associate content with chapters.

John 7, 8, 9 and 10 all deal with Jesus Christ’s third trip to Jerusalem. On this third trip several things have happened. One thing that you saw from John 6 that has already happened is that Jesus Christ is now no longer popular; we would have to substitute for the word “popular” notorious. Christ has become notorious but He is not popular. And therefore on this third Jerusalem trip the Lord Jesus Christ is going to do things that utterly contrast with the character that you normally associate with the Lord Jesus Christ. This is a picture that is very infrequently observed about Christ. And so in these chapters, 7-10, we are going to watch how He behaves in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles. Remember that John rotates his narrative around the feasts and so in John 2 it was the Passover; John 3 was the background of the Passover. John 5 was another unnamed feast. In John 6 it was the Passover, and you see from the first part of John 7 it is the Feast of Tabernacles.

Now the Feast of Tabernacles, we said last time, was part of a Jewish fall calendar. It showed the consummation of Israel’s history. The Feast of Tabernacles was when the King would appear to assume command of His kingdom. And there were certain passages in the Old Testament that had to do with the Feast of the Tabernacles and I’m going to take you to two of these passages because these passages out of the Old Testament were on the mob’s mind when they observed Christ doing the things that He is about to do. And they connected His works with these passages and came to a very false conclusion. So therefore to prepare ourselves turn back to Zechariah 14:16, this last chapter of Zechariah looks forward in time to the establishment of the millennial kingdom. It is the time when history has come to its consummation, and certain things are said to happen during this millennial kingdom. “And it shall come to pass that every one that is left of all the nations which came up against Jerusalem shall even go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of armies, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.” So the Feast of Tabernacles figures very prominently in millennial expectation. And to an under trodden people, to a people that lack political freedom, that wanted and cherished freedom, looked up to the Messiah, the Feast of Tabernacles would be that one time when this national anticipation of the freedom of the kingdom would come into prominence. So through passages like Zechariah 14:16 the Feast of Tabernacles came to be identified with the establishment of the millennial kingdom.

In the next book, Malachi 3:1 there is another passage that deals with Messiah’s return to set up His kingdom. This passage in particular figures in tonight’s narrative. It says, “Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye shall delight in; behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts.” And so we have in verse 1 the prophecy that Messiah will suddenly appear in the temple, and some in Christ’s day were saying that this verse taught that you would not know from whence Messiah comes, that His genealogy would be unknown at this time, that no one could tell until suddenly He appeared there in the middle of the temple. It’s that motif that sets us up for John 7.

So now let’s turn to John 7 and pick up where we left off last time, verse 10. From verses 10-30 we have a slow built up an escalation; we have a progress toward a gigantic confrontation between Jesus Christ and the authorities. It builds slowly, the tension increases from verse to verse, until you have an explosive outburst. And John 7, repeated with another explosive outburst in John 9. In between the two passages is the John 8 discourse about the woman caught in adultery and a lot of critics say that chapter doesn’t belong here; I’ll show you it does belong there and it belongs there for a very, very good reason.

In John 7:10, remember last time His brothers who disbelieved argued that Jesus Christ ought to go to the temple, for surely there in the temple Christ could reveal His character. Now in verse 10, after having denied that He is going to appear in the temple, according to His brothers, and His unregenerate brother’s wishes, He now takes off but secretly. “But when his brethren were gone up, then went He also up unto the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. [11] Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, Where is He? [12] And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him: for some said, He is a good man: others said, Nay; but He deceives the people. [13] However no man spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.”

Verses 10-13 are the first unit of this escalation, and verses 10-13 are to prepare you for what’s about to happen. It’s to prepare you to give you the setting to show it kind of sets off what Christ is going to do. See, John told us what Christ did and if He didn’t give us this information we’d lose a lot of the whole point. The whole point in these verses is that there is an atmosphere of hushed notoriety, hushed because it’s fear, fear of the authorities. And we have thousands and thousands and thousands of people gathering together to worship the coming Messiah for His kingdom, but they worship in fear. And it’s that atmosphere, they worship, they whisper, who is this Jesus, who is this Jesus, we hear He makes claims, and they’re astounding, but the mob, thousands upon thousands of people are afraid. And it’s in that environment that Jesus pulls off what He is about to pull off.

It says in verse 10 that Jesus Christ went up to the feast but He didn’t do so openly. The idea is that Jesus Christ, in His humanity, takes common sense precautions for His life. Jesus Christ was not naïve, He wasn’t the fatalist we spoke of this morning, the person that says well, what’s going to happen is going to happen. Christ took safety precautions to protect His own life. Why? Well, verse 1, here are some of the reasons. In verse 1 Jesus Christ refused to walk in Judea “because the Jews sought to kill Him.” In verse 13, which we just read about, nobody dare speak because of fear. In verse 19 the accusation is made that they’re actually plotting His death. In verse 25 the rumor goes through the mob that the authorities are about to close in and destroy Christ. In verse 30, “they sought to take Him but no man laid hands on Him because His hour was not yet come.” In verse 32, “The Pharisees heard that the people murmured such things,” and they sent officers and police to take Him. And finally in verse 44, “And some of them would have taken Him but no man laid hands on Him.” Why does John, at point after point after point in this narrative say fear, fear, fear, fear, fear of this closing of the trap on the person of Christ? It’s to set us up for one of the most dramatic statements that Christ will make in public in His career. Jesus Christ, however, until the time comes for that dramatic statement is going to take common sense precautions.

It says in John 7:11 that “The Jews sought Him” it’s an imperfect tense, it means they constantly sought Him, they went through the crowd, the word “Jews” here doesn’t mean all Jews, it refers to the leaders of the Jews, and they sent their agents into the mob to listen as the pilgrims came to the Feast of Tabernacles from all over the Mediterranean, Ethiopia, Africa, Arabia, Persia, wherever the Jews filed into Palestine from, there agents would be listening to hear; did they know anything about Christ’s location, have they heard, are they contaminated by the teachings of this man. So you have this tremendous notoriety. Christ has made claims that have caught the attention of the people. In John 2 what did He do the last time He came to Jerusalem? He walked in the temple and cleaned it out. And then if that wasn’t bad enough, after He cleaned it out what did Christ turn around and say to the people? Go ahead; destroy this temple, in three days I’ll raise it up. And that irritated them; in fact, that sentence comes up at His trial later on. So that first trip was not too popular. And then in John 5, the year before He came what did He do? Of all days to heal a man He picked the Sabbath day; deliberately healed a man on the Sabbath day and appeared to violate the Sabbath Law. And then when they came to Him to try to get Him to clarify that He offended them even more by saying He was equal with God. So He wasn’t very popular from that.

And then this passage, John 7, occurs in the fall of the same year of John 6 which occurred in the spring. In the spring the people who had heard Him up in Galilee were pilgrims that were coming south to the Passover feast in Jerusalem. And what words did they bring to the authorities in Jerusalem. Jesus is up north in Galilee and He said, “He who munches on My flesh, and he who drinks My blood” is the only kind of person that come into the kingdom of God, offensive words to the Jews. So wherever they listen they hear these almost totally irritating claims that Christ is making. So this is why in verse 11 is this picture of the agents fanning out through the crowd, constantly asking where is He, where is He, where is He, I want to arrest Him and get rid of the problem.

John 7:12 it says the crowd, “there was much murmuring,” people were talking about Him, Jesus Christ was causing controversy, notice the last part of verse 12, some people “said, He is a good man: others said, No; but” and this is a way the King James has of translating the fact that these people are arguing. Verse 12 is not saying there’s just a mere disagreement; what verse 12 is saying is that one person would be saying He’s a good man and no sooner would he finish saying he’s a good man but there’d be someone else saying no He isn’t, He’s a deceiver. And so there was an active arguing going on among the people about Christ.

Now this shows us something about God the Holy Spirit and how He works. Whenever the Word of God goes forward in a revival, now I’m not talking about normal evangelism, but whenever you get an unusual movement of the Spirit of God you’ll have this phenomenon repeated, that the Word and its claims become controversial in every sector of society. And it’s the same thing; it’s the same thing in the academic world, you can take all sorts of sub issues, the creation/evolution controversy, in the great halls of open-minded academic freedom we have the spectacle of otherwise intelligent people tiptoeing around afraid that someone might find out that they’re possibly creationists. Why? Fear, fear of the authorities who hate the Word of God, fear of the men who pass on the PhD orals, and pass on the doctorates, fear, fear, fear, just like the crowd here. The days have changed but the issues haven’t.

The same thing, another sub issue where this happens is the claim that on the Christian basis the ultimate authority is the Word of God and not man, and that God’s Word precedes mathematics and philosophy and science itself. Science does not come along and add to the Word; the Word precedes and is the ground of all other truth. And to make that claim you have to pussyfoot around in certain circles because of the tremendous persecution of the modern day liberal Pharisees.

And then a third sub claim in our modern day that would illustrate this same tiptoe in the light of fear is the dogmatism with which the gospel claims that Christ is “the way, the truth, and the life” and that only accepting Him leads to heaven; the exclusivism of the gospel, that Christ is the only way, not an way but the only way. That offends people in this day of ecumenical.

So see that all this fear in verses 10-13 is being repeated and played out in front of your face today; it’s just played out a different way but the issues are basically still the same. And I want you, when you are trapped, so to speak, by the system and you feel crunched by the system, afraid to speak out for Jesus Christ, let Christ be your model here and let’s see how Jesus Christ reacts in this kind of a situation. Now He doesn’t react foolishly and He doesn’t go around looking for fights, but when the moment comes He speaks out and He speaks out with perfect vigor and clarity. There is a time to keep your mouth shut but there’s also a time to keep it open loud and clear as Christ is going to show us. And so in verse 13 the summary that no man dared speak, no man dared speak because of the intimidation.

Now because this is going to occur in the temple we want to review a little bit of what the temple looks like; give you a picture of where this scene occurred. I’ll refer several times to the temple because I’m going to give you some background scenes to appreciate what’s happening; tonight we’ll just look at the temple itself. Again, to catch up with where we were in John 6. John 6 took place right there, in the area around the north, in the area of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus Christ and His disciples now have come down the Jordan Valley and out of the depths of the Jordan Valley have come westward and upward to Jerusalem. And that’s why you read in your Bibles Jesus “went up to Jerusalem.” Normally when we look at a map like this and see a movement from the north to the south we say Jesus went down to Jerusalem but we’re wrong, here’s why. As you go down the Jordan Valley you’re in a depression; a depression below sea level. This is an area up to the north, just south of the Sea of Galilee. It’s just a flat area; down this area came Christ on His way to the rendezvous of John 7. Then He came up, this picture is taken just east of the city of Jerusalem as you come from Jericho westward and upward, up out of the Jordan Valley. This is a scale model of the city as it looked in Jesus day; here is the temple of Herod.

The center part of the temple with the court around it; it was in this outer area that Jesus chose to teach. It was in this outer area where the incidents of John 7, 8 and 9 occur. All through this area, here is where Gentiles and women could inhabit; within this wall was the area where only Jewish men could worship and within the innermost wall was the area where only the priests could worship. A view of the area where only Jewish men could go and the second gate where only Levites could go. Those steps leading up to that gate are the steps on which was chanted where it says in your Bible the Psalms of ascent, as they would ascend here these would be sung.

Back to John 7; John 7:14-19 is the first collision between Christ and the crowd in the temple. In verses 14-19 we have a theme two-fold. One theme is the competency of Christ; the other theme, the incompetence of the crowd. The crowd begins by insinuating that Jesus has no authority and it concludes by Jesus saying the crowd has no authority. So things get off to a good start with a complete and total and emphatic disagreement on the question of ultimate authority—Jesus or the crowd and there’s a complete challenge at this point.

John 7:14, “Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and began to teach.” The picture is that all the preliminaries have been dispensed with and that Malachi 3:1 imagery is in the background, “the Lord whom you seek will suddenly come to His temple,” and now, they haven’t been able to find Him, He’s hidden Himself, and suddenly He’s there in the middle week, the third or fourth day of the feast, and He begins to teach. And immediately He’s challenged in verse 15, “And the Jews marveled, saying, How knows this man letters, having never learned?” The argument is that Jesus Christ lacks authority; the argument is as the rabbinic teachers would argue that you must always cite your authority. Christ had no authority so they claimed because He wasn’t graduated from any of the seminaries.

So in John 7:16 Jesus responds to their insinuation that He has no authority to cite. “Jesus answered them, and said, My teaching,” or “My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent me.” Who do I cite for My authority? I cite no rabbi, I cite God the Father. So His challenge is against their usual human scholarship. He overrides the usual scholarship and the usual footnotes and says I cite God My Father.

And then in John 17:17 He makes one of the most epistemological statements that the Bible ever makes, that is the statement about how do we really know that we know? How do we know something? Verse 17, He puts it very succinctly, He says, “If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself.” The “if” is a third class if, maybe some do and maybe some do not, but “if any man is willing,” on a long term basis, he is “willing to do God’s will,” and the word “God’s will” emphasizes the content of God’s will. Those of you who are looking at the Greek you’ll notice that the word ends in ma here, a ma ending. Now the ma ending, when you see that on a noun means it’s the content. When you see this kind of an ending on your Greek word, that’s the act, it emphasizes the act. So this isn’t the act of God deciding, this is the content of what He decides. And so the expanded translation of verse 17 is: “If there be any man here, and maybe there are some and maybe there aren’t, but if there be any here who are willing to do the content of what God wills, then you’ll know whether what I speak is true or not.”

Now the teaching of verse 17 which is so very offensive to most philosophers is that the base of knowing is ethical, it is your moral character that determines how you know. The Bible grounds all knowledge on ethics; first it’s what kind of a person you are, then it’s what you know. Jesus Christ is not saying that they haven’t heard the Word of God, they’ve heard it but He says if you actively seek out with your God-consciousness to submit to it, to work with your conscience as one made in God’s image, you’ll recognize God’s Word when you hear it.

Let’s move it over into an area that’s easier to see; let’s suppose we deal with an infant in his crib; is the infant able to recognize the voice of his mother? Well, if the infant is hungry and he wants to be fed he knows the voice of his mother; he doesn’t have to go on a long extended intellectual search to determine whether the bedpost with the thing hanging down from his crib or whether that person who comes and feeds him which one is his mother. He knows which one is his mother. And he knows this because he craves what his mother and only his mother can give him. And so what God is says is thus all men know God because they crave what God and only God can give them. And when there’s that craving in the human heart there won’t be a recognition problem, there will not be an epistemological difficulty; the epistemological difficult or the knowing difficulty only comes about because of man’s sin. Knowing from start to finish is ethical in Scripture, so Jesus insists right here. If you have trouble, He says, recognizing the Word of God your trouble is not with your brain; the trouble is with your volition; the trouble is that you’ve already decided that you are going to be your ultimate authority instead of letting God be your ultimate authority and it can’t be both ways.

Then He goes on to expand that statement in John 7:18, “He that speaks of himself seeks his own glory: but he that seeks His glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him.” Jesus takes the two options, the human viewpoint and the divine viewpoint; He’s giving a principle but He’s applying it in perfection to Himself. He says the principle is this, that on a human viewpoint basis you always have glorification of man in some way. It’s always finite man decreeing what the standards shall be, whether it’s an individual finite man or whether it’s a thousand finite men coupled together in a so-called democratic society, voting on whether or not thus and such is right. It doesn’t matter whether it’s individual or collective, the principle is always the same—who gets the glory, the glory of the radiating legislator, that is the man, man is the one who legislates.

Some were asking a question this morning about what do you do when somebody says that God is this way or God is that way. It’s very simple how you respond to that; how do you know that God is this way or God is that way? You undoubtedly have explored the length, height, and depth of the universe and out of an infinite array of knowledge have come solidly to the conclusion that God must be this way and not this way. Is that what you intend to assert by that proposition. Obviously no person in his right mind can assert that kind of a proposition but people do it all the time. Well, I think God is this way, and why do you think God is this way? What criteria do you have to prove to me that God is this way and not that way? There is none and we have none and we are totally cut off from making any statement unless God Himself has told us, then we know something of whether God is this way or that way. But you see, it’s always the same story, autonomous man leads to glorify himself and this is what we must face with our apologetics, with our own hearts, with our own Christian life, with our own evangelism of non-Christian, the Bible insists on pointing out over and over and over again the depth of pride involved and coupled to the intellect, that man has so much pride in his intellect, he can’t release the pride and therefore he cannot think God’s thoughts after God. He always has to glorify himself in his own intellect.

And Jesus says “he that speaks out of himself,” there’s finite man speaking out of himself, out of his limitedness, and out of his sinfulness he can do nothing except glorify himself, but He says “he that seeks the glory of him that sent him,” that is of God, “that one is true.” He is speaking in dependence upon the one who sent him, he is submissive to God’s Word, he lets God’s Word stand over everything he says, every judgment he makes he submits and bows his knee to the absolute authority of the Word of God. And Jesus in verse 18 goes on, it becomes very clear He’s applying it to Himself, because He then says, that same person, “that same person is true,” and we have a little tip-off and careful Bible study will show us something here, this is the way the word looks in the Greek, alethes, this word if you look it up in a Greek concordance, check how John uses it, you come to a very interesting conclusion. John the Apostle reserves this word in all places except this one for God alone. Only God is called “truth,” men speak truth but men are not truth itself. And here Jesus comes out and makes this statement. He says I not only speak truth, I am truth. Now to a crowd that’s just asserted its own autonomous reason you can imagine how this went over. And then to add insult to injury, not only does He claim that He is the truth in the same words that monotheism taught about God, He goes on to says and moreover there’s on unrighteousness in Him, with the insinuation, like there is in you.

So you can see that right here we start, almost like Jesus picks a fight with these people. Why does He pick a fight with them? Because of the atmosphere of fear; remember how this whole narrative started, everybody is talking, what about Jesus, what about Jesus, what about Jesus and always looking over their shoulders to see whether the spies are in the crowd, undoubtedly the same way as on many college campuses; oh, but we have intellectual freedom, as they’re going to claim we have total open-mindedness here, that kind of concept. So this is what angers Christ, this façade of intellectual of intellectual open-mindedness.

And so He begins to work on them and He goes on in John 7:19 and He’s going to quote there assumed authority, which is Moses, “Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keep the law? Why go you about to kill Me?” So what has He done by the time we arrive at verse 19? He [can’t understand word] challenged the entire crowd’s basis for knowing, He’s undermined their own claims by giving the counterclaim that He is the ultimate authority and then He has gone on to assert that they even break their own law of Moses because they’re seeking to kill Him. This would be tantamount today of saying there is no open-mindedness in this environment; I am not free to speak the truth of the Word of God in this classroom, or write it in the newspaper or something else.

So we now come to the third section, John 7:20-24 when Christ begins to operate on the sinful inconsistency of the crowd. He has challenged their authority, He has irritated them, He has shown that He alone is competent, they are incompetent. Now He shows their inconsistency. John 7:20, “The people answered and said, You hast a devil: who is going about to kill thee?” You see, even in the face of the fact that they’re all looking over their shoulder at Big Brother, they have the gall to say in that situation, why Jesus, you’re crazy, nobody is going to kill you. And you see John’s irony, as they assert their own freedom and everything is at peace they’re busy watching for the Jews who constantly seek in the crowd, where is He, where is He so we can get Him.

So they accuse Jesus of being demon possessed in verse 20, you have a demon, you’re crazy. Who is killing you? Jesus doesn’t even reply to that charge, He just simply goes back and continues to show them that this thought is contrary in whole to the Old Testament. John 7:21, “Jesus answered and said unto them, I have done one work, and ye all marvel. [22] Moses therefore gave unto you circumcision; (not because it is of Moses, but of the fathers;) and ye on the Sabbath day circumcise a man. [23] If a man on the Sabbath day receive circumcision, that the Law of Moses should not be broken; are ye angry at me, because I have made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath day? [24] Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.”

Now the issue, you remember, came from His last trip to Jerusalem. That happened, probably a year prior to this passage. A year ago Christ showed up at the temple at a feast time and He healed that person over in the pools of Bethsada and it was done on the Shabbat, the Sabbath day and that offended them, and Jesus says that’s why you’re going to kill Me, isn’t it, because I came in here the last time and I healed a person on the Sabbath day, one work and you all marveled. John 7:22, “Moses has given you circumcision, therefore,” now everything would be find in verse 22 if it wasn’t for that little word “therefore.” And when you’re going to be careful in your interpretation of Scripture you’ve got to explain all the data and if you’ll read through verse 22 very slowly, after having first read verse 21 you see there’s a very definite question raised. Why is there a “therefore” liking verse 22 to verse 21; what is it logically that follows from verse 21 in verse 22? “Moses, therefore,” gave you this.

Well, apparently the argument is like this. Jesus is saying you know, after Moses gave you the whole Sabbath thing and after He designed the Law with all the 613 dos and don’ts Moses built within the Law something you people ought to have seen centuries ago but you never have. Moses had you doing certain things; there were certain exceptions to the Sabbatical Laws and all during these centuries when you people have professed to be following Moses, you should really have been asking the question, hey, how come it is that on the Sabbath Moses lets us circumcise a person and he lets us do these other things. Doesn’t that tell us something about the purposes of the Law, and the higher, the bigger picture of what’s going on here? So that’s why he puts a “therefore” in verse 22, he says Moses didn’t just give you the Law blind, He gave it to you with adequate insights and He puts the blame then on the crowd. The crowd is responsible for misinterpreting the Mosaic Law. Moses gave unto you circumcision.

Now we know exactly what He’s talking about and we know the crowd was conscious of it. I’m going to read a section out of a basic tool for New Testament studies, the Mishnah. The Mishnah is a codified form of Pharisaical legislation as was developed after the time of the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s a part of the Jewish Talmud. And this document at this point, in the section on the Sabbath, has this very passage, a passage that describes what he is talking about, about circumcising on the Sabbath. Item 3 under section 18 of the division on the Shabbat: “They may not deliver the young of cattle,” now this shows you the intricacies of the Law. I’m going to actually read you the tradition that was written down which was the oral tradition circulating in Jesus’ day and as you just back off and listen to this a minute I want you to see how detailed this law was and how involved it all was. Instead of seeing the big picture and just kind of relaxing with it they had all these little ifs, ands, buts, rule books, sub rules, amendments to rules and amendments to the amendments of the rules. Listen to this paragraph:

“They may not deliver the young of cattle on a festival day but they may give helped to the damned. They may deliver a woman on the Sabbath and summon a midwife for her from any where and they may profane the Sabbath for the mother’s sake and tie up the naval string.” Rabbi [?] says they may also cut it and they may perform on the Sabbath all things that are needful for circumcision. But another Rabbi says if they had not brought the implement on the eve of the Sabbath it may be brought openly on the Sabbath and in time of danger a man may cover it up in the presence of witnesses. Rabbi Eliazer says, moreover they may cut wood on the Sabbath to make charcoal in order to forge an iron implement. Rabbi [sp?] laid down a general rule, any act of work that can be done on the eve of the Sabbath does not override the Sabbath but what cannot be done on the eve of the Sabbath overrides the Sabbath.

And then it goes on with these big intricacies about the act of circumcision, about how you make the bandage, what kind of bandage you should use, what kind of bandage you can’t use after the evening. And it goes on and on and with all this detail. And that was what was being followed by the Pharisees and this is the background for why Christ gets irritated when they don’t see the big picture. They’ve got all these minutia and they don’t see the obvious picture. What was circumcision in the first place? Well, it was a sign of the Abrahamic Covenant, that’s why Christ clarifies it in verse 22, He says Moses gave you the circumcision within his Law but it didn’t originate with Moses, it originated with the fathers, the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was given as a sign? So what does circumcision do? All right, it made various points of doctrine clear; first of all, it was a hygienic principle and therefore reflected the spiritual cleanness of a regenerate person. The circumcision was also given in order to make clear why intermarriage would be condemned, that no Jewish male could have intercourse with a non-Jewish girl, without obviously the non-Jewish girl knowing he’s Jewish. And so the whole point is that it’s a constant reminder of the cleanness and the separateness of the Jew in the ancient world.

But it was more than that; the spiritual reason behind circumcision was a picture of making men whole. God, so to speak, made a part of a man clean, but that was a picture of making the whole man spiritually clean. Now Jesus picks up that and uses it in verse 23. “If a man,” first class if, “and he does, on the Sabbath day receive circumcision,” and you just heard the Mishnah and you now know what the custom was in the time, He says if that’s okay, “that the Law of Moses should not be broken, why are you angry because I have made a man completely whole on the Sabbath day?” The argument is from the lesser to the greater; if your Law permits a little bit of a man to be made clean, why then does it prohibit all the man from being made clean. Do you know what the claim here is? The claim is that that man was regenerated back in John 5, that when he was healed he also was born again.

John 7:24 is the counterpoint to the question of verse… well, it goes all the way back to verse 15, the people in verse 15 said “How can this man know, never having learned?” Now John is a very subtle writer and to catch his irony and to really enjoy the Apostle John you sometimes have to say whoa, let me stop and think about this for a couple of hours. But you see, there’s a higher irony to this whole thing. Here’s the crowd of puny people saying to Jesus, Jesus, how can you know, son? That kind of attitude, when who in fact is Jesus but the Word of God who John identifies in John 1:9 as the basis of all human knowledge. In other words, the eternal Word of God is standing three feet in front of their face and the irony is that you have finite man asking the infinite Word of God how do you know son, you never went to our schools. That’s the irony that is sown into this discourse that John wants us to look at. So this is why in verse 24 Jesus finally appeal to them, “Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment,” and you can’t judge righteous judgment unless you have a standard for it. And so what He ultimately is saying in verse 24 is judge according to Scripture; do not judge Me according to what appears to be in your own finite analysis.

Now from John 7:25-30 we have where it heightens and the intensity gets greater. The tension is increasing and building for that ultimate point of conflict. “Then said some of them of Jerusalem,” notice in verse 25 John wants us to know it was particularly those members of the crowd who lived in the city of Jerusalem that knew this, they had been there the last year, some of the pilgrims from far off Arabia and Persia, Asia Minor, they didn’t know what had gone on last year, maybe they weren’t there at that time so they don’t have all that knowledge, but the people of Jerusalem knew. And so “some of them of Jerusalem said, Is not this he, whom they seek to kill?” Which clearly shows that the authorities were plotting at this point to do away with Christ and what they appeared to be absurd claims.

But now in John 7:26 the crowd…again here is John’s irony, sarcasm and irony. “But, lo,” look at this, “He speaks boldly,” the word is publicly, “and they say nothing unto him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is the very Christ?” Now to catch the irony you have to understand that “know indeed” in verse 26 means don’t they believe you? What the crowd is asking, look, Jesus Christ has just got up in public in the middle of this impossibly hostile situation, remember I started off and I read verse after verse after verse that showed you that hushed tension, nobody dared to speak because everybody was afraid of being reported by Big Brother. And now, says the crowd, here we are in the middle of the temple afraid about who is going to overhear what we say about Jesus, and here’s the guy Himself coming right here in the middle of the temple and making some more outstanding claims. Now said the crowd, we can only conclude from this that the authorities must okay it; do the authorities then accept these Messianic claims. Are the authorities in sympathy with Jesus? Have they changed their mind about Him? This ultimately is going to really provoke the reaction which we’ll see next week on the part of the authorities because now they’re beginning to lose their control over the crowd; now the crowd is beginning to think that they’re in cahoots with Jesus which is the last thing they want.

Notice in verse 26 John deliberately points out something of Jesus’ daring in His courage. “He speaks boldly,” now the word “boldly” here is the same word used in verse 13 for openly, it means to speak in public. And look at the contrast, look at verse 26 and then look at verse 13; here you have verse 13 with hundreds and thousands of people, surely people outnumbered the authorities and they were all intimidated, afraid to speak the Word of God. And along comes one man, remember He deliberately went up to the temple alone, didn’t He.

See now why He went alone, He went without His disciples, He went without His family, He went completely alone so that He could suddenly appear in His temple, the Lord whom you seek, the angel of the covenant, and He’d walk in the middle of that temple and He’d speak out loud right in front of the authorities who were trying to arrest Him. And the crowd just can’t believe this kind of thing has happened. Surely nobody would be so stupid, of all the places to get caught, you just saw pictures of that temple, all you have to do to catch somebody is close one gate, that front gate, and you’ve got everybody trapped inside that temple. And it’s very easy to go through the crowd with a team of police and pick up whoever you want; everyone’s trapped so it’s right there in the middle of that and this is why the crowd can’t have any explanation, the authorities must have changed their mind.

Well, but also there’s a counterpoint to that, and so in John 7:27 they don’t quite believe yet. “However, we know this man whence he is: but when Christ cometh, no man knows whence he is.” This is a common interpretation that existed at the time from Malachi 3:1, they interpreted that verse to mean that when the Messiah came He’d just kind of suddenly, boom, just appear in the temple and you wouldn’t have any idea of His genealogy. And so a second controversy starts.

Now here’s the first incident of Jesus in the middle of the temple. John 7:28, “Then cried Jesus in the temple as he taught,” now this shows you He’s really asking for trouble right here. The word “cry” is the strongest verb to show loudly. In other words, Christ has not only walked in the temple, He is not only teaching under the very noses of the people that are about to arrest Him but to add further tension to the scene He shouts out to them, so everybody in the temple court can hear it, He makes no secret of His claim. And at this point you have a balance to what I prepared you before, for two or three weeks I’ve made this point about Jesus took protection, Jesus was wise, when He saw threats upon His life He made common sense preparations to protect Himself.

But when the time came to risk something for the Word of God, Christ was no longer timid. He was wise in that He didn’t deliberately look for a fight, but when there came that moment of confrontation, when not to speak would be cowardice, Christ had no fear whatsoever of anybody physically bothering Him. And here is what you’re seeing, the courage of Jesus Christ as a lone individual, no help from His family, no help from His followers; even His brothers ridiculed and He has the audacity to walk into the temple and make some of the most astounding claims of His career. And so literally it means He screamed in the temple as He taught, that the voice reverberated from wall to wall that everybody in that court of Gentiles and woman heard these next words. “… saying, You both know Me, and ye know whence I am: and I am not come of Myself, but he that sent Me is true, whom ye know not.” You can obviously see He wasn’t using the Dale Carnegie approach, how to win converts and influence masses. Jesus Christ here was actively convicting the mob of their wrong ideas of themselves. He says, “You know Me and you know whence I am; that I am not come of Myself,” but this is sarcasm.

We would rather translate this, Oh, you know Me, do you? You know where I come from, do you? Well let me tell you something, I come not from Myself and you don’t even know who it is that sent Me. Now this is a sneer, kind of, in the sense of the Jewish honor, because surely they knew who sent the Messiah. What was in Malachi 3:1 because that’s the verse that’s in the background of this whole thing? Read that one over again and see if you can see what Jesus is getting at. See, they have read Malachi 3:1 and when they read Malachi 3:1 they conceived of Jesus suddenly becoming visible, kind of going boink, right there in the middle of the temple. That was their interpretation of Malachi 3 but what Jesus does, He goes back to Malachi 3:1 and He correctly interprets it, “Behold, I will send my messenger,” that’s John the Baptist, “and he shall prepare the way before me; and the Lord,” that’s Jehovah, “whom you seek, shall suddenly come to His temple, the angel of the covenant, whom ye delight in; behold, he shall come, says the LORD of hosts.” “The LORD of hosts” is the military title for the Father in this case, not always, sometimes it’s the Son but in this case because it’s opposed to the first Jehovah, the mid part of the verse, we conclude that it’s the Father. And so He’s saying that “the messenger of the covenant” comes by order of Jehovah. So when Jesus, then, gets up and screams across the temple court, “You know Me, do you? You don’t know Me and you don’t know who it is that sent Me,” He is saying you Jews, you don’t even know Jehovah. Now this is pretty tough language and it gets tougher as time goes on.

So in John 7:29 He disassociates Himself from the crowd, but He is still shouting because the shouting is including verse 28 and 29, that whole thing reverberated from wall to wall in the temple, “But I know him: for I am from him, and He hath sent Me.” The essence of verse 28 and 29 is that I am the only one here that knows Jehovah. Now how can you sit there and read something like this and come up with this absurd conclusion that Jesus was just another great religious teacher? How can anybody come to that stupid conclusion? Any man that would have said this kind of thing in the middle of a religious crowd at the day of the Feast of Tabernacles, deliberately identifying with the Messianic prophecy, saying that He only was the authority and no one else in the crowd was, including all the rabbis in the crowd, all the priests in the crowd, that He had superior knowledge to everyone else, and then to come out and say you don’t even know Jehovah but I do. That kind of a person is balanced, is sane? You see, these passages don’t allow that conclusion. Christ has to be who He claims to be or ridiculous, just the whole thing is ridiculous.

And so John 7:30, the conclusion of this episode, “They were seeking to take Him,” the word “seeking” here is imperfect tense, they constantly sought to take Him, “but no man laid hands on him, because his hour was not yet come.” In other words, we don’t know what happened but apparently all the plots fell through. When they wanted Jesus in this part of the temple thing, He was over in that part. When they sent the guys to the gate to close the whole thing off they got lost in the crowd, it was just one frustration after another, nothing worked, their arrest scheming, their tactics of arrest failed. No man was able to lay hands on Him and John then adds the explanation, besides describing it he explains why it happened, because it wasn’t God’s sovereign time yet, that’s why. See that relaxed attitude. It wasn’t God’s sovereign time; now that’s not fatalism, we’ve already seen Jesus did take precautions when necessary, but when it came to that time, when you had to risk your life to stand for the Word of God and it was a clear cut issue, then go ahead and be loud-mouthed, as loud as you can proclaiming the Word of God. God will protect you. That’s the model.

Remember, John is writing the Gospel not just to tell us about Jesus, He’s writing this Gospel to Christians who in a decade were going to be martyred for the Roman Empire, who would face a very similar situation and John is giving us a model for that time of persecution when it’s that time, go like Jesus and shout in the temple, shout out the claims of the Word. And if it’s not God’s time to take you into phase three, to take you as a martyr nobody will touch you, everything will fall through, all your enemies will be frustrated. Don’t presume on this and don’t be foolish about it but when the time comes know that it’s there.

This is background, if you’ll conclude by turning to John 1:10, that introductory verse, here He is in the temple, and John summary verses of 10, 11 and 12 hold for that crowd that day. “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. [11] He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” What does John have them doing in John 7? Questioning His authority, saying that He has no right to make these claims, saying in fact that He’s a pest, that He’s a danger to society, He must be eliminated by Big Brother. All these things, [12] “But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God,” and as the discourse goes on, you’re going to find that as people stand there, they watch this, first they watch Christ, then they watch the authorities and they watch this dialogue go back and forth, people are going to believe, and hundreds of people during this Feast of Tabernacles became believers in the Lord Jesus Christ because of Christ’s testimony in that crisis hour, when He shouted and He screamed doctrine from wall to wall in the temple, people trusted in Him.

As we go on this Feast of Tabernacles we’ll see one incident like this after another. Shall we bow…