John 7:10-24

Hey, everybody.

Thanks for being with us again

as we continue through the Gospel of John, the seventh chapter.

Just a

just a reminder.

If you weren't with us yesterday, we had a passage in which Jesus's

brothers.

And you can go back and unpack all that if you'd like to watch yesterday's episode.

Jesus, brothers, tell him he he should go to this festival,

the Festival of the booths, which is in, in Judea.

And Jesus says, I'm not going.

You go if you want.

And it's a significant passage.

It's not particularly theological, but there's a lot in there.

And again,

if you missed yesterday's discussion, it might be worth going back to pick it up.

But today we continue in verse ten of chapter seven.

And we find out that there's more to the story.

So I'm going to read a few verses here.

Then we'll come back and talk our way through them.

Verse ten.

But after his brothers had gone to the festival,

then he also went not publicly,

but as it were, in secret.

The Jews were looking for him at the festival and saying, where is he?

And there was considerable complaining about him among the crowds,

while some were saying he's a good man.

Others were saying, no, he is deceiving the crowd.

Yet no one would speak openly

about him for fear of the Jews.

Let's just stop there, Michael.

Just a couple of verses in.

So, after this kind of,

it's probably overstated to call it an argument.

After this discussion with Jesus and his brothers, we find out

Jesus does, in fact, go up to the festival

and his brothers had told him, you know, you should go and be seen.

And Jesus instead goes, and it says he was in secret.

Now, that's not going to remain the case, but that's where the story starts.

And here we have interesting details from John.

The Jews are looking for him, saying where is he?

And the crowd is complaining, or at least

not a small part of the crowd is complaining.

And a few said he's a good man, but others said he's deceiving the crowd.

And then a very interesting line, Michael.

No one would speak openly for fear of the Jews.

In other words, whichever team they're on, he's a good man or he's not.

Or he's deceiving the crowd.

They just want to stay away.

They know that the religious leaders and when John says Jews,

that's who he has in mind.

These would all be Jews. When?

When John says that he has in mind those religious leaders in the crowd knows

that those religious leaders are wound up about Jesus, and it's better

to just stay out of their way and stay off the record.

So this is a fascinating turn in the story.

It is a little bit of a setup in the previous study that we had,

and definitely like Clint said, go back and listen to that.

But when you have people saying, hey, the most

effective thing for you to do is to go show people who you are, right?

Go, go, give them the signs, go teach them the lessons.

And then here today, Jesus, instead of doing the thing

that would make the most sense, he goes in secret.

And there we almost get the sense that Jesus is the one hearing these things

right.

Jesus is amongst the crowd as there's considerable complaining

about these differing ways of understanding who he is.

John.

Once again, and not to sound like a broken record, but John is

just upfront about the divisiveness of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

John is not hiding that in any way,

and it becomes abundantly clear in this gospel

that Jesus is a divisive character

that people are either able to see or they're not.

And I think what's really striking here in the midst of this debate

that John relates happening there, whether or not on one hand,

Jesus is a good man or whether or not on the other

that he's deceiving the fact that they're all being silenced

because of the fear of the Jews only serves to increase our awareness

of how turbulent Jesus's relationship is with very influential Jews.

Remember here he's in at the festival

in Jerusalem, so he's at the center of Jewish power.

And John in chapter seven is already portraying

that Jesus has gotten crossways with the Jews we just had yesterday.

He's being sought to be killed.

Here there's already this very, very strong debate happening.

And and John's laying out for us, not just how some are repelled like a magnet.

Some are brought to him, but many are repelled from him.

And that Repellants is becoming even stronger as the story goes on.

Yeah.

The I think it's an important note that you added there, Michael.

We've already been told that the Jews, these religious leaders,

Jesus enemies growing in their animosity, were seeking to kill him.

So he's he's on their radar,

not as just a frustration, but as someone to be eliminated.

And again, that that tension is now beginning

to inform all of the tellings of the story and all of the crowd here.

So let me continue.

Jump in here, verse 14, pick up another couple verses

about the middle of the festival.

Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach.

The Jews were astonished, saying,

how does this man have such learning when he's never been taught?

Then Jesus answered them, my teaching is not mine, but his him who sent me.

Anyone who resolves to do the will of God will know

whether the teaching is from God or whether I'm speaking on my own.

Those who speak on their own seek their own glory.

But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true,

and there is nothing false in him.

So now we have another one of these moments

with Jesus and the religious leaders, the Jews,

having a conversation, a conflict, really

it it starts well enough.

They are impressed by Jesus.

At least they're impressed by the depth of his knowledge.

How did he learn such things?

Remembering John

Jesus always knows the back story of what people are thinking and saying.

So Jesus answered them.

They don't necessarily say it to him, but Jesus answers them.

This is not my teaching.

It's the one who sent me.

Anyone who seeks the will of God will know whether a teaching is from God or not.

And it's it would be easy to misread that and think that what Jesus is saying

is that if we're trying to be faithful, we have some discernment.

I think it's better to read it backwards and to say those who know

Jesus is true, understand the teaching is from God.

I think John is not here trying to elevate our ability to discern.

I think he's trying to elevate Jesus and verify Jesus by the fact that those

who are seeking God's will know that,

or encounter truth in the Christ in Jesus.

Those who speak on their own seek their own glory.

But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true,

and there's nothing false in him.

It's interesting. Michael.

And I, I don't know if I would have thought to say it this way,

but one of the distinctive is, I think I see in the Gospel of John is

the things that the faith would say about Jesus.

John often is comfortable coming directly from Jesus.

So we would we would as faith.

People say Jesus doesn't seek his own glory,

but he seeks the glory of God who sent him.

And he is true.

And there's nothing false in him.

But in John, John's comfortable with Jesus saying those things about himself.

I think that's less true in the other gospels.

Certainly a gospel like Mark, you're not going to hear this language,

but but John is comfortable with Jesus proclaiming things

that the church would later proclaim about him.

And I.

And I think, you know, that gives John

a readable sense for people of faith.

There's not a lot of confusion here in the way say, well,

you ask, well, why doesn't Jesus want people to know who he is in Mark?

That's not here.

This is Jesus saying things about himself that we would later come to agree with.

If we could read this text with fresh eyes.

I do think it is a challenging text, and this exists

in this theme or this strand that runs throughout the Gospel of John.

It's very challenging when we have this idea

that Jesus is the one who claims to be speaking for God.

He's literally here.

The teaching is from God.

And then there are those who seek their own glory.

But but Jesus is the one who's seeking to give glory to the one who sends him.

This is very, very robust Christian

theology, that this is intended to be a primer

for our understanding as Christians in the generations to come.

Right.

John is explicit about the fact that we're given this book

to have enough information so that we can believe and the ways

in which Jesus continues to teach,

even if it is against the grain of the culture and against the grain

of the religious leadership of Judaism at the time of his life.

What Jesus is doing here is making a compelling case,

as told through the Gospel of John, as to the fact that he is the Son of God

doing the father's will, while yet in the beginning of the gospel,

saying that he is all at once a co-creator, he was with God

from the very beginning that this combination of factors,

the fact that Jesus speaks for God and in this case is not claiming to be

God is in fact claiming to be teaching God's will.

And then at the beginning of the book made it very, very explicit

that Jesus is indeed that God

himself, that he's been present since the creation.

This is a holding intention of the church's historic theology

about the fact that Jesus is fully God, that Jesus is fully human.

And yes, you could get this.

There are snippets of this.

There are breadcrumbs of this throughout the other gospels that exist.

You can find them if you were going to look through it.

But nowhere in Jesus's voice.

No place more clearly in terms of the consistent themes of the book

is this kind of robust, nuanced theology present

and I think that the church owes a great deal of our understanding

of who Jesus says.

Much of our creeds, much of our beliefs stem from this book.

They stem from Jesus's own teaching in red letters that we have in front of us.

And I think, Clint, that makes this book eminently important.

It also makes this book, in some ways less accessible

in the sense that it's not just the story of Jesus.

There's some deep lessons being taught in the midst of it,

and we've got to stay awake, and we got to stay tuned if we're going to see them.

I think one of the benefits of John

is that the as we've just been saying, Michael, that John encapsulates

what we would

call Christology, in other words, our theology of Christ.

John encapsulates that and clarifies it in

a way that I think is more open ended in the other gospels.

And that gives us, maybe in some ways

the sharpest look

at Jesus, theologically speaking.

Let's go ahead and finish out the rest of this passage.

Jesus continues to talk to the Pharisees or the Jewish leaders here.

Did not Moses give you the law?

Yet none of you keep the law.

Why are you looking for an opportunity to kill me?

The crowd answered, you have a demon who is trying to kill you.

Jesus answered.

I performed one work and all of you were astonished.

Moses gave you circumcision.

It is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs.

And you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath,

in order that the law of Moses may not be broken,

are you angry with me because I healed a man's whole body on the Sabbath?

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

In every one of the gospels, we,

as those who come later, get to listen in

on some,

arguments over the details

of things that were known in Jesus day.

These aren't things that are very important

to us or that play much of a role for us anymore.

Things like whether they wash their hands on the Sabbath

or whether there's

healings on the Sabbath, or in this case, an argument over circumcision,

which becomes very big in, say, some of Paul's letters, like Galatians.

But, but every gospel gives us a chance to try and enter

in a few of these family arguments that Jesus has with Jewish leaders.

And that's what's happening here.

So the idea of circumcision is that you had to be circumcised.

It was expected that a boy,

a baby boy, would be circumcised on the eighth day of his life.

Now, as you probably know, there's a prohibition

of doing work on the Sabbath, which is Saturday in their culture.

However, if a child is born on

Friday of the preceding week, then there's circumcision

would fall on Sabbath, and they would be circumcised.

It was understood that the Sabbath, the circumcision, was more important

to to do on the eighth day than it was

to prohibit that being done on the Sabbath.

And so Jesus is saying here, you know,

you have this law that says, don't do anything on the Sabbath,

but you have another law that you follow that says it's okay on the Sabbath.

I heal the whole body, I may.

I gave a person their life back.

I changed a person's reality and healed them completely.

And you want to argue that it's on the Sabbath.

You do a little thing on the Sabbath and you say, it's okay.

I do a life changing thing on the Sabbath, and you're ready to kill me.

And then there's this line at the end do not judge

by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

And I

there's a sense in which I think, Michael, that that's

a good summary of a lot of Jesus conflicts.

Right.

That when you strip it all down, what Jesus is saying is, look,

if it's not for your misinterpretation of things,

you would be able to see that I'm doing good.

I and I go further than that.

I'm doing God's work, I'm doing godly things.

And because you won't see that, because you're wrapped up

in your own stuff and misusing the law,

you're ready to have me branded as, a heretic

and a blasphemer because you simply don't get it.

And that fits well into John's perspective.

I think there's another thing happening here that is really mind

blowing, really honestly here.

And notice that he's referencing the man healed on the Sabbath,

you might remember, and you'd have to go all the way back

to the beginning of chapter five to find the story of the man

by the pool of the cedar, who Jesus heals on the Sabbath day, and then you realize,

whoa, whoa, whoa, aren't we here now in the middle of chapter seven?

So it's been an entire

selection now of

stories, which this story is bookending.

And that's amazing that you begin to see that how carefully, John has constructed

this telling of Jesus's life, so that you can understand that the

the revelation moment started by Jesus restoring

this man's body has gone through all of these conflicts and teachings

and lack of revelation and abundance of revelation and debate and fight.

And now we come right here to this unbelievably pithy statement,

which you can now see sort of tying the bow around the whole package.

And it's amazing.

Do not judge by appearances, but judge with righteous judgment.

I don't think that this is just a statement about morals.

This isn't just about what's right and wrong.

I think this is also about judge rightly about the appearance of the one

standing in front of you.

I think there's a sense in which, theologically, John wants it to be clear

that with right eyes, with right hearts,

we can see and judge rightly about reality.

What's reality?

That's Jesus Christ, that's his presence, that's his restorative power.

If you don't see him, then you seek to kill him.

Then you're repelled by him, that you're you're set off on an entirely different

path and the path that leads to death and violence and destruction.

Because you are running

from the source of life, you're running from the one who restores.

And when you run away from restoration, you run headlong into destruction.

And John is portraying this through Jesus's signs

and miracles, right through the works he's doing with real people.

And also, I think one of the ways that we've said so often now, Clint,

John also does it uniquely through the explicit teaching of Jesus.

Those are always bound together as one.

You always have the sign with the teaching.

And to those who believe, it is a nourishment of the faith

to those who disbelieve, it is simply ammunition towards the assumption

that they made from the beginning.

Yeah. And and we want to follow here.

I mean, this is there's a boldness in this.

Essentially, we get to the end of the story.

Jesus says, judge with right judgment.

And the clear implication is you're using wrong judgment.

You are wrong.

Jesus is telling these experts in religion, the these men who are

charged with and believe themselves capable of discerning the work of God,

of understanding and interpreting the law.

These are men whose lives are

centered in the practice of religion, and Jesus is saying to them in

pretty clear words, you're wrong about everything.

You're wrong about me. You're wrong about the law.

You're wrong about yourselves. You're wrong about God.

It it's

easy to read a sentence like that and miss the offensiveness in it,

but keep in mind, I mean, think about what Jesus is telling

these people and think about how much these people don't want to hear that, that

that's a bold that's a bold thing that Jesus says, you are wrong.

You're judging wrong.

Your judgment can't be trusted.

And certainly that's going to anger them.

The way in which we see

Jesus conduct himself in John

is all at once clear

and revelatory and also

confusing and spiritually deep

and the honesty with which he's portrayed is,

I think, an inspiration to how we, too, are called to live our lives of faith,

to be able to give account with simple words to what we believe,

while also having experienced and have the awareness

of how deep this faith goes and how truly,

endless the

the extent of the revelation of Christ and the ways

in which that nuances and fills our life with meaning and value.

It's all there at the same time.

And John makes it clear that in Christ it's been there since the beginning.

Thanks for being with us. Hope that this has been helpful.

Certainly I give this video like if you find it interesting, helpful,

or maybe even challenging and do subscribe so you can stay with us as we go

through stays like this. Clint.

This text in many ways began in chapter five, and so subscribing gives you a way

to stick with us as we go on long journeys through the gospel like that.

We'll see you tomorrow. Thanks.