29th March 2022 – John 7:14-24

Tue 29 Mar 2022

^"14About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. ¹⁵The Jews therefore marvelled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” ¹⁶So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. ¹⁷If anyone's will is to do God'swill, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. ¹⁸The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. ¹⁹Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” ²⁰The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” ²¹Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. ²²Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. ²³If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? ²⁴Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement.”"

John 7:14-24

One wonders whether John is thinking of Malachi's prophecy (3:1, 2), 'The Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple'. Jesus' coming to the temple certainly precipitated a sense of tension and crisis there. The Jews were astonished at His teaching, but 15 is an expression not of admiration but of criticism - criticism that one who was obviously untrained in the rabbinic schools should be speaking with such confidence and authority. But Jesus refers them to His authority as being God (16), and asserts that if they are prepared to do the will of God they will know whether His teaching comes from God or is merely His own. An interesting point arises here. Men are often much more concerned to quote or refer to acknowledged authorities of the past than they are to recognise or discern a true spiritual authority in what they hear. In many quarters there is an unwillingness to pay any heed to what a man says unless he can bolster it up with copious footnotes from the scholars. This, in our view, is not a healthy state of affairs - not that the scholars have nothing to say, or that scholarship is not an essential (indeed it is), but that to give it an exclusive prerogative in the realm of truth can effectively prevent the Spirit having His freedom in the Church, for it makes the tacit assumption that no creative truth or new insight into truth is possible except from the past. And this is absurd.

In 19ff Jesus deliberately takes the offensive, bringing out into the open the point of contention that became plain as far back as chapter 5 - the healing of the man on the Sabbath day. This was the burning issue: His challenge to the Jews' entrenched interpretation of the law was one that they could not bear. And it led, humanly speaking, to His death.

J Philip Bible Readings

29th March 2022 – John 7:14-24

28th March 2022 – John 7:10-13

27th March 2022 – John 7:1-9

26th March 2022 – John 7:1-9

25th March 2022 – John 6:60-71

24th March 2022 – John 6:60-71

23rd March 2022 – John 6:51-59

22nd March 2022 – John 6:35-50

21st March 2022 – John 6:22-34

20th March 2022 – John 6:15-21