The Gospel of John Lesson 23 (2-24-2013) John 7:40-53

The Gospel of John (2-24-2013)

Lesson 23 – John 7:40-53

As we saw last week in vs. 37-8 Jesus made an offer to those present on the final day of the feast of booths, offering them a refreshing drink of the Spirit likening the Spirit’s drink to rivers of Living water. It was something to be received, not to be purchased, earned or worked for. His offer was straightforward and made available to anyone that would receive it.

I make a point of this because even though this was an unbelievable and yet very practical offer, if we were real honest with ourselves we would have to admit that receiving such an offer is not so easy for us, especially in our day. When someone offers us a gift, especially one like this, we may consider receiving it, but not without wanting to earn the right to have it or pay back at least part of the cost of what we are offered.

Think of it, if someone buys you dinner it is only natural to want to pick up the tip or if someone does something good for us our initial response all too often is ‘You can’t do that for me!’ or ‘Oh, don’t do that.’  Down inside it makes us uncomfortable to receive. Something inside us makes us want to earn what we get. It’s part of our nature and spirit of man.

I believe that it is even more accurate when God makes the offer or shows us His kindness in freely forgiving our debt of sin. It is not natural for man to receive a full pardon for a debt so great without wanting to pay Him back in some way, usually in service. In essence, this was the difference in perspectives between Cain and Able. Cain offered God the works of his hands as his offering as payment for his offenses while Able received God’s offer of forgiveness recognizing what had been done by offering God a blood sacrifice. Receiving from God has always been hard for man, but I believe this is even more true in our day, even for those in the Church. It seems that we would much rather do something for God than receive from Him.

If you think of it all of the history of man can be summed up as man’s advancements and achievements that free him from his dependence on receiving from God. We want to put it under our control, in our timing, as much or as little as we want. In our present culture man has no need for God and what God can do for him. Instead he has all that he needs found in his present world and does not need to ask God for barely anything,..and man seems to like it that way.

As the industrial age and the technological age has advanced it is easy to see that man has relied less and less on God. If man has a need it is evident by his actions that man’s faith in the hope for the answers for tomorrow’s problems has shifted from seeking out God for these answers to some new technique or procedure devised by man bypassing the need for God almost entirely.

Sadly this perspective has also been adopted to a large extent in the church as seen by our actions trusting instead in modern so called marvels and in our own abilities to not only answer our own questions, but to meet our own needs, waiting on God for little to nothing and offering God our good deeds as if that were enough to give Him.

But, here in Jn. 7:38-9 we see Jesus the Son of God make the claim that in reality that we are thirsty down inside and that it is a thirst that cannot be quenched by our own efforts or with our offerings to God. God says that we must receive what we need from Him.  We must receive refreshment from God quenching our thirst. For a doing culture and a doing Church it is not easy for us to be on the receiving end, especially when it is God that is giving.

Here in vs. 38-9 He was offering them something that they had to receive in order to get the benefit. Are we willing in our culture today to freely receive from God so that we may give to those in our world? How often do we stop to truly receive a message or direction from our Lord? This was the question that Jesus asked Martha in her continual service or doing. Mary had stopped to truly sit at the Masters feet to receive and to worship. The question that I have is ‘are we willing to receive from God direction and the answers of this life’ or are we always offering God our version of life? Even though God does want us to serve Him, it is important to freely receive from Him those things that He offers us. His desire for us is only good! In order to do so we may need to stop like Mary for a while and sit at His feet.

In vs. 40-2 we see those who heard Him come right up to the line almost to the point of believing that Jesus is indeed the Messiah, but some stop short being confused on some of the remaining details. There was still some confusion as to Jesus’ origin. Jesus had spent so much of His time up and around Galilee that many were confused as to His true origin of birth thinking that He was actually from Galilee. Even though He was born in Bethlehem, in essence He had grown up in Nazareth, and was known as Jesus of Nazareth. This last point was a big one because they knew that in order for this to be the Christ that every detail of prophesy shad to be fulfilled.

They were right that it was prophesied and foretold that the Christ would be born of the seed of David in the town of Bethlehem. But, many had associated Him and His origin with Galilee. This was most likely because He grew up in that region and had spent most of His time there in ministry.

We have to remember that information in that day, or should we say misinformation, traveled through unreliable sources often making its way to the people not containing all of the details. Some degree of misinformation was common in the message concerning most news or details. The only source that could reasonably be counted as reliable was what was written down. This is why the Scriptures and their teachings were so reliable. But, much of the information that the people received other than Scriptural teaching was by word of mouth or possibly hearsay, some good and fairly accurate and some having little to no basis at all, or at least missing some of the details. As stated in v. 43 this led to a division among the people concerning who Jesus was and what they believed about Him. (Is this also true today??)

In v. 44 we see that the division was so strong and the opinions concerning Him were so diverse and opinionated that some wanted to take Him by force and deliver Him to the officials, namely the Jewish rulers or the Pharisees to be punished and in all likelihood put to death. But His time had not yet come and it says in v. 44 that try as they must no one was able to lay hold on Him.

In v. 45 it tells us that the officers that were sent out to take hold of Him and secure Him had to go back and report to the chief priests and the Pharisees empty handed. They were met by the chief priests with the question of why? Why were they not able to bring Him back as they were instructed? They gave the religious leaders an interesting reply, one that they didn’t expect and that they did not want to hear.

But, no one could deny that their reply was an honest one.  They had been overcome with the Words of the Master. Their reply was ‘Never a man spoke like this man!’ Their response infuriated the chief priests and Pharisees. These officers were supposed to be on their side. These religious leaders had sent out these men to retrieve a man they considered a blasphemous deceiver and they returned to them not only empty handed but close to also believing that this man was special and could indeed be who He claimed to be.

Those that were sent out were not considered common folk. These were officers. Officers of the temple sometimes considered temple police. They were trained in the duty of protecting the temple and in particular protecting the Holy Place from uncleanness as instructed by Israel’s religious leaders.

These were not Roman officers, but Jewish officers and officials that had the duty and position of carrying out the demands and duties under the leadership of the Jewish religious hierarchy. The following is an excerpt from the following web address in actuality referring to those that came to take Jesus at His Crucifixion, but in actuality could have been this setting and this incident recorded here in John 7:

(http://www.jesuswalk.com/lessons/22_47-53.htm)

The Make-up of the Crowd

Of whom does the crowd consist? Luke indicates that it includes "chief priests, the officers of the temple guard, and the elders." (22:52)

Luke's term, "officers of the temple guard" (NIV) or "captains of the temple" (KJV) translates the Greek noun strategos, which means here, "commander responsible for the temple in Jerusalem."[2] He is not a Roman officer, for the Romans are not under the chief priest's authority.

The term "elders" (Greek presbuteros) refers to members of a group in the Sanhedrin, the ruling council of Jerusalem.[3]

Matthew characterizes the group as "a large crowd armed with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests and the elders of the people" (Matthew 26:47). Mark adds "teachers of the law" (NIV) or "scribes" (KJV) to the list of conspirators (Mark 14:43). John includes "a detachment of soldiers and some officials from the chief priests and Pharisees" (John 18:3). John's term "detachment of soldiers" (NIV) or "band of men" (KJV) is the Greek nounspeira, a military technical term that refers to a "cohort" (the tenth part of a legion which normally had 600 men).[4] These were temple troops.

Day and night the temple was guarded by Levites to prevent, so far as possible, the unclean from entering. They also acted as the temple police. At night guards were placed in 24 stations about the gates and courts, each guard consisting of 10 men. In all, 240 Levite guards were on duty every night, relieved each morning. The officers of the temple guard were in charge of these troops.[5] It is ironic that the soldiers who took Jesus into custody were normally charged with protecting the Holy Place from uncleanness.

The religious leaders could not believe that officers of the temple could be so gullible as to be deceived and taken in by one such as Jesus and in vs. 48-9 they begin to use peer pressure to try to bring them back to their perception of reality telling them that only common folk that are unlearned could be so gullible as to believe Jesus. The religious leaders make the assumption that none of those who have been educated in the law and know better have been deceived and have cast in their lot with Jesus and have begun to follow Him. But, in reality by assuming this they are really wrong on two counts.

First what they did not realize was that some of the religious leaders had begun to question some of the temple practices and had begun to side with Jesus concerning His teachings and doctrines. What Jesus had said had begun to make sense to them and what the religious leaders did not realize was that most that were questioning the religious leader’s rules and doctrine were afraid to do so publically for fear of retaliation from them receiving punishment or feared being cast out and being ostracized from the temple.

This was a big deal. To do so not only meant that you did not get to go to church, but in reality if this happened you would then become in essence an outcast of society. All of Israel’s social and political society centered around their religious practices and beliefs which found their expression in and around the temple and temple life. The temple was everything.  If you were cast out of temple life and temple practices there was not much left.

The second thing that they were wrong about was that only the common people did not know the law and therefore were being deceived by Jesus because of their ignorance. But, these religious leaders were also blind to the Truths contained in the Law and Scripture, blinded by pride and their own conceit.

In actuality the law that they espoused was not the Law of God at all, but in reality were their laws and rules that they had formed over hundreds of years of manmade traditions and practices that they turned into strict practices and religious laws. These were not God’s observances and therefore they had no foundation from God’s perspective as far as their being law. This was a tough situation that caused many to be overly cautious deciding to remain silent concerning what they thought or really believed.

In v. 50 we see a good example of this. In v. 50 we see a ruler of the Jews reemerge named Nicodemus. We remember him and his encounter with Jesus in chapter 3 where because of the probable penalties of being associated with Jesus he came by night to Jesus to ask Him questions that were troubling him.

Now we see him here in v. 50 of chapter 7. Some time has passed. He has had some time to think about his encounter with Jesus in chapter 3 and the words that were spoken to him then and in v. 51 we see that he has gotten a little bolder and shows signs of being more convinced that Jesus is speaking the truth that he tries to reason with his peers asking them to at least listen to what Jesus has to say before they pass judgment on Him.

But, his peers would not listen to reason and pretty much accuse him of being also ignorant of the facts using as their justification the premise that it was not prophesied that the Messiah would come out of Galilee accusing him of siding with the Galileans.

But, here again it was Nicodemus’ peers that did not have all of the facts right. It was true that the Messiah would not come out of Galilee, but Jesus was not born in Galilee. Somehow they missed this fact concerning Jesus. Jesus was indeed born in the city of the Messiah, Bethlehem of Judea. At least Nicodemus began to try to talk some sense to them. We will see him again later in this book going further in his faith toward the cross, but for now v. 53 tells us that the meeting and discussion eventually broke up and everybody went home.

Some Bible commentators believe that it was Nicodemus’ words that brought an end to the discussion, again dividing those present. Some believe that the Sanhedrin in reality could not refute Nicodemus’ words and therefore broke up and left the meeting frustrated taking no real action going to their own homes.