John 7:25-36

Hey, thanks for being with us.

We continue through the gospel of John, passage out of time.

Today, we find ourselves in chapter seven.

We're in the 25th verse.

Jesus has been,

kind of having some conversation, maybe even conflict with Jewish leaders,

Pharisees, Sadducees, those kind of religious leaders, primarily,

though John doesn't those aren't labels that John typically uses.

So we pick up the story,

verse 25, read through it, and we'll come back and talk through.

Now some of the followers, some of the people of Jerusalem

were saying, is this not the man whom they are trying to kill?

And here he is speaking openly, but they say nothing to him.

Can it be that the authorities really know this is the Messiah?

Yet we know where this man is from.

But when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he's from.

Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple,

you know me and you know where I'm from.

I've not come on my own, but the one who sent me is true.

And you do not know him?

I know him because I am from him.

And he sent me when they tried to arrest him.

Then they tried to arrest him.

But no one laid hands on him because his our had not yet come yet.

Many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, When the Messiah comes,

will he do more signs than this man has done?

So? Kind of some interesting stuff here.

You have,

this is a loaded word in our day and age, but you have almost

a kind of conspiracy theory sort of stuff happening here.

The crowds are watching Jesus and remember, in

the Gospel of John, we've said this over and over.

John is fascinated by the idea that Jesus is

is observable for people, that if they pay attention, they will see the truth.

And some of the people say, could it be that they know he's the Messiah?

Is that why they're not arresting him?

Is that why nothing is happening?

And then Jesus answers them, you know me.

One of these kind of typical, almost little sermon things that Jesus says.

I'm the one who sent me.

I know him because I'm from him.

And I sent me. He sent me.

And then there's just a very interesting John line.

They tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him

because his our had not yet come.

And so again, in in the Gospel of John, Jesus

is always in control of his own fate.

And if it's not his time, he's not.

Nobody can do anything to him.

He stands above and outside

of all of their intentions, and he knows what they're doing.

So, kind of a kind of a classic John line here.

And then more interestingly, at the end,

many in the crowd believed

and to some extent, Michael, I feel like this is where John has been leading us.

Right?

The idea that they saw Jesus, they heard Jesus,

they hear the counterarguments to Jesus.

They see the enemies of Jesus and some of them

in in the midst of this observation, are coming to believe.

And that's that's the crux of this book.

It is the subtext that goes throughout it, no doubt.

And some of that is a connection that we see with John seeking to show us

what the substance of faith needs to be grounded

in, what the foundation of faith needs to be.

And and some of that, and I think specifically relevant

for our conversation today is rather than John's insistence

on returning over and over and over again to the origin of Jesus,

to the the beginning of Jesus, not in the chronological sense,

but in a theological sense.

From whence does he get his strength, his power, his authority,

his ability, and, you know, we have this interesting

sort of juxtaposition happening within this larger story

of the Festival of Booths going to Jerusalem,

because we've already had this flip flopping happen.

I just really want to point this out so that you make sure you see this.

This is all the way back in seven, verse 20,

where the crowd says, you have a demon who's trying to kill you.

Well, today we just skip forward a little bit.

25 now some of the people of Jerusalem are saying it's not this is the man

that they're trying to kill.

So John's embedding these kind of juxtapositions

already within the story being told.

And then there's the question that follows from that.

Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah, that,

you know, then they go on with this problem, but

we're not supposed to know from where the Messiah comes from.

The Messiah supposed to just sort of come on the scene.

And this is a real argument that John is

sort of laying out in narrative form as to where an early Christian

and now flowing all the way to today, where should you put your faith on?

What substance or foundation should you build your faith in Jesus Christ?

And his point is that if you believe that you have to wait

for a messiah that no one knows, then you're going to miss

the Messiah who has been sent by God himself.

That if you believe the one who sent him, God the Father,

then you will recognize and see the son for who he is.

And I think, Clint, there's a real kind of pragmatism to this, that there are

people in the first

century with real doubts, with real questions

about who Jesus is, about what he taught, about why you should believe in him

to be the Messiah.

And John is providing for us a coherent story

which pulls back the curtain, so to say, to show us

exactly why we should believe Jesus as the one who is sent,

who proclaims the message of the one who sent him,

even if the crowd knows where he's from, even if there's all of these

sort of discordance, some believe,

and some are seeking to kill him, and some are asking questions

and some are in the midst of coming to true and honest and authentic belief.

Like you pointed out, Clint, verse 31, all of that's happening in a messy crowd.

And I think that John is showing us that not on accident,

but rather as the point that this is all happening, response to who Jesus is,

and it helps us navigate our lives in faith through similar journeys.

I think we're familiar with it.

So it's easy to miss.

But John's laying out the alternatives here, right?

You have you have the Jews, the religious leaders, the experts saying

he's not the man, he doesn't follow the law.

And he says these things about himself and he's he's not the Messiah,

but the people are saying, well, look at what he does.

And this line at the end, at the end of this is very interesting.

Many in the crowd said, when the Messiah comes,

will he do more signs than this man has done?

In other words, well, what else could he do?

What what what don't you see in him that we see?

What? What are you missing?

What don't you think is is testifying to this man being the Messiah?

And again, I think John loves that idea.

You've you've got A and B and you look at Jesus

and you make a decision is he or isn't he?

And I think he is laying out those arguments here right in front of us

as some slowly begin

to come to the faith, they're being convinced,

and which is, I think, a helpful

thing to remember, that faith isn't always a lightning bolt.

These people are seeing. They're thinking.

They're hearing, and they're beginning to put their faith in Christ.

And that's how it happens for many of us.

So some people, it is an all at once thing,

but for many, they get to a point where what they see

in Jesus is enough and they say, well, what more?

What other sign would I need to see when the

if this isn't the Messiah, then what is the Messiah going to do?

What is the Messiah going to be?

And so I think this moment of belief is significant in John.

Let's jump into this, this next passage is a it's an extension here.

Verse 32.

The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him,

and the chief priests and the Pharisees sent a temple police to arrest him.

And Jesus said, I will be with you a little while longer then I'm going to be.

Then I'm going to him who sent me.

You will search for me, but you will not find me.

And where I am you cannot come.

The Jews said to one another, where does this man intend to go,

that we will not find him?

Does he intend to go to the dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks?

What does he mean by saying, you will search for me,

and you will not find me, and where I am you cannot come.

So again, very true to form here for John.

They come to arrest him. They don't.

He says some things to him, and that's all we have about that.

Jesus,

avoids them or evades

them, or they give up whatever it is.

Jesus doesn't have anything happen to him in the Gospel of John

that isn't he doesn't give permission for.

And then what he says, and we've seen again, classic misunderstanding.

You'll search for me, but you won't find me, and you can't go where

I'm going.

And they misunderstand.

They take this again. We've seen it.

They take it literally.

Where is he going to go?

Off into the Roman Empire somewhere?

Or is he going to go leave where the Jews are and go out to where the Greeks are?

Is that what he plans to do?

Go be a traveling preacher.

What does he mean by saying this?

You will search for me and not find me.

And these kind of passages are John's

breadcrumbs for the believers.

The reader knows what Jesus means.

And so these passages reinforce

who the reader understands Christ to be.

I think

clearly these moments John has in mind

that his audience are people who understand who Jesus is.

And as we read these words, we know something of what he means

when he says, you won't find me, you can't come with me.

And so those become a affirmation of Jesus within the community.

Yes, they're they're part of the story.

And yes, it is Jesus conflict with the Pharisees.

But John uses that as a witness and testimony

for those who are reading a gospel and who know something of Jesus already.

I it's so helpful that you say that I was going to go down that very same road.

Clint.

And I think it's worth noting here that this is some very sophisticated writing,

which has many senses built into it from the start.

And the one that we're emphasizing in the conversation today is that John

is writing this book with the awareness that many,

if not all of the readers in that first sort of reception of it,

we're going to be those who already knew the story of Jesus's death,

Jesus's burial, and Jesus's resurrection,

and this story and the way that Jesus is quoted

in this story very clearly hooks into that previous knowledge.

In other words, you're going to come looking for me.

Literally, they are going to come looking for his body.

And when they go to the place where it should rest, it will not be there

when they go.

Then to find him, they can no longer follow him.

That kind of awareness that is built into this book is an amazing

layering of meaning

because to the believer, to the first church that receives this,

this is a kind of yes, it's

a debate between Jesus, it's Jesus's teaching, and

and there's a confusion being offered that Jesus is the wise one and it offsets,

through, you know, the, the discord or through the distance.

The what the experts don't know.

Jesus does know. Right?

So it amplifies Jesus's knowledge and wisdom.

On the flip side of that, though,

it also provides a different way of viewing history.

Right.

Because one way that

you could have looked at Jesus's death if you're in this crowd, if you were

one of these religious leaders, is we got him, we killed him.

Then they went and got rid of his body so that they could continue

on with this religious movement.

And the way that John tells the story to that first generation is.

No, this wasn't an idea made up later,

Jesus literally had told ahead of time the very people who would seek his life

that they couldn't follow him to the place that he was going.

And that is the kind of depth of spiritual

teaching that can be embedded in a gospel narrative.

And I think this is happening in different ways.

Every gospel writer in the New Testament, they're teaching things,

but John has a kind of way of layering both what the story means, literally,

with what the story might teach us theologically, with what is happening

for those later in the church and the ways in which Jesus's

teaching originally might speak to that, there's so much of that interplay.

And I think that's one of the reasons I love this book, is that you can read

this from all of those perspectives, and just begun starting to read the book,

I. I wonder, I think it's fair to say, Michael,

you know, in the other gospels, they're, they're told

in a more narrative way.

And what I, what I mean by that is they're told like a typical story.

They tell us Jesus story, which leads us to the cross and the resurrection.

John, very much, I think, works differently.

I think the cross is the lens through which John tells the story.

He he's less trying to lead us to that moment than everything.

He everything is drenched with that moment.

It's not my time.

My hour is coming.

Judas is going to betray him.

You won't see me again.

We these things are far more deeply embedded

into the way that John tells the story that the cross reaches,

I think, further back into the text than it does in the other Gospels.

Obviously, in the other Gospels, Jesus is always headed toward the cross.

He's predicting it to the disciples.

But, but, but it is.

It's just the water you swim in

when you're when you're going through the Gospel of John and I.

And I think, you know, these kind of passages are good examples of it.

I'll be really brief here.

And you mentioned it very quickly.

And I just want to emphasize here at the end of the conversation, just note

how John does portray Jesus as all knowing he knows what people are thinking.

John portrays Jesus as being all powerful.

This idea that they couldn't touch him because it's not as our.

They really stand no chance in the Gospel of John and know this,

that that question that we leave you with,

will the Messiah when he comes.

This is verse 31.

Will he do more signs than what this man has done?

And I think you said this, Clint, and it's a great word to end on.

In the Gospel of John, there are more than enough signs to see who Jesus is.

The question is, are the signs that are enough for you?

Are they enough for me?

When we look to Jesus, will we have eyes of faith to see this man

with exception of wisdom and power and and and spiritual strength?

Is he enough, or are we dissatisfied?

And will we look somewhere else?

And John is not hiding that.

He's not beating around the bush and he's not trying to cover that up.

There are so many people outside the faith who levy that very critique

against Christians, right?

Well, you haven't thought through the options

or you haven't given an account to what could be.

John is, to his credit, I think, Clint, he takes that seriously.

John truly gives us, a human

perspective of the variety of responses to revelation.

It's been there from the start.

Are these miracles enough, or what else would you be looking for?

And that's a great question

that hang over us as we seek to follow along through this gospel journey.

Yeah, I think one of the one of the great things about John is just presents

the choice of the text to the reader over and over and over again,

and, and always is asking us the question, what do you see in the man Jesus?

And therefore what do you believe about Jesus the Messiah?

So, it's a really well written in that sense that it just keeps

that those questions in front of us in many, many different ways.

We'll conclude quickly today, like this video,

if you found it helpful, helps others find it later in their own study.

Subscribe to stick with us along this story of John with all of its twists

and turns. We'll see you next week as we continue on Monday.