
Feast Fight
June 26, 2022
One of the things I hate in life is when someone thinks they know me, thinks they know what I’m all about, but they’ve never taken the time to get to know me. And because they think they know me; they are quick to make judgments about me.
Let me give you an example of what I mean: When I was a student at Western Seminary, I lived in Salem, Oregon. That meant every time I drove to school it was about an hour commute to the Campus on the East Side of Portland. Once in awhile the traffic would make that commute take much longer. On one of those days that I was running late, I pulled into the parking lot and took the first spot available and ran to class. No big deal. The next time I drove to school and pulled into the parking lot that very same spot was available, so thinking nothing of it and being a creature of habit, I pulled in and parked. Later that day, however, I returned to my car only to find a scathing note attached to my windshield. It seems that I had parked in a spot reserved for faculty – and since I had parked in this spot two days in a row, this professor concluded that I was a defiant rebel who blatantly disregarded the rules.
So, I went to see him to apologize. That’s when he laid into me. He was livid. He just launched into a tirade about how rebellious and brazen I was to openly defy the rules. I was dumbfounded. When he was done raking me over the coals, I asked if I could explain why I parked where I did. He allowed me this, so I told him how the first time I parked there I was running late and simply pulled into the first spot I saw. Then the next time I arrived on campus, being a creature of habit, and seeing that spot open, I thought, “Ah! What a deal, I’ll take that same spot again.” I had never seen any sign saying it was reserved for faculty. And I told him, if I knew that I would have never parked there. And from now one, I will never park there again. I hope you can forgive me.” He did. But I’ve never forgotten the feeling of having my character assaulted. I’ve never forgotten what it felt to be so harshly judged by someone who thought they knew me. He just assumed I was defying the rules. He just assumed I was a rebel.
Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been wrongly judged by someone who doesn’t know you? Well, if you’ve ever had your character assaulted, you’re in good company, for what you’ve experienced happened to Jesus. And this morning we are going to look at three groups of people who assaulted Jesus’ character – and how Jesus sets them straight.
So, if you brought a Bible with you today, let me encourage you to find John 7. As we return to the story of Jesus in the Gospel of John our text is John 7:14-36, where Jesus has come to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. As this encounter unfolds, we are going to see three different groups: the Jews, the crowds, and the people each assault the character of Jesus. And as Jesus counter’s their assaults, Jesus is going to not only reveal who He is, but what’s really important to Him. So, if you’ve found John 7, let’s look at round one of the Feast Fight: Jesus’ encounter with the Jews/the religious leaders. And here we see their assault on Jesus: “You’re not competent!” Look at verses 14 and 15, Not until halfway through the Feast did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The Jews were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having studied?” John 7:14-15
Notice, The Jews call him “this man.” This was a deliberately insulting term for a Rabbi. It shows how much contempt that the religious elite had for Jesus. They didn’t like the fact that he had such great knowledge of the Scriptures without having to go through the traditional route of learning from one of the renowned Rabbi’s. He had no formal theological education. He had no formal accreditation. He had not gone through the system. No one had authorized “this man.” He can’t possibly be legit? Their words were meant to fully discredit any authority Jesus might claim to have as a teacher, even though Jesus spoke with greater learning or authority then them.
So, Jesus throws them his counterpunch: “Your faith is not competent!” Listen to how Jesus busts their chops: Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from Him who sent me. If anyone chooses to do God’s will, he will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. John 7:16-17
The Jews raised the question of Jesus’ competence as a teacher. So, Jesus raises the question of their competence as hearers. And he counters by using a common rabbinical tactic: The rabbinic method of teaching was to cite your authority for all important statements. Jesus’ authority is not some rabbinical school of thought but God Himself. God has given Him the content of His teaching. And by making this claim, he declares that His teaching is superior then theirs. And then he says, any sincere person would know this. You don’t need a theological degree to know this, you just need a heart that chooses to do God’s will. And those who choose to do the will of God will have the spiritual discernment needed to understand His teaching. So rebukes the religious leaders, saying: “If you don’t understand my teaching, it’s because your hearts are unwilling to submit to God.”
He is saying: submission comes before understanding. He is saying that if you don’t have a heart that wants to do God’s will, you will not be able to recognize God’s teaching when you hear it. Understanding God’s teaching comes from making this kind of faith commitment. Now I love how Professor D.A. Carson explains this. He says, “God’s will is not simply to be thought about and assessed, as if God is the object we may politely examine, dissect and discuss, picking and choosing what we like of Him. The faith commitment envisaged here, this moral choice, is properly basic, and renders impossible any attitude that sets us up as judges of God’s ways.” In other words, the Jews, the Scribes and Pharisees, these religious leaders had set themselves up as the authoritative teachers of God’s Will. They decided what was God’s will and what was not. They had set themselves up as judges of God.
So, what Jesus declares here is that faith isn’t found in embracing a belief system. Just because you know all the right facts doesn’t mean you have faith in God. Faith is not about embracing a belief system; it’s about trusting in God and submitting to His will.
Now, if these Jews had it all wrong, that means that we too can get it wrong as well. We can deceive ourselves into thinking that if we have the right beliefs about God, we can be right with God. We can deceive ourselves into thinking if we go to all kinds of Bible studies, if we know what the Greek and Hebrew says, that somehow, we have the inside track with God. Now, don’t get me wrong, knowing facts about who God is, and holding to key doctrines of the faith are important. You have to believe something about God to act upon those beliefs. But there is No faith until you are willing to surrender your will to His. That’s where genuine faith begins. It begins when you are willing to trust that God’s will is better than following our own will. So what Jesus is saying here is this: True faith in God is birthed in a surrender to God’s will!
And now to bring home his point, He throws this jab: “Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?” Jesus says in effect: “You want to kill me because you say I broke the law, but your desire to kill me violates the law of Moses.” Doesn’t the law of Moses say, “Do not murder”? This statement uncovers the fact that it’s not Jesus who’s the incompetent teacher, it’s them. Because they themselves violate the law, they are incompetent teachers. Ouch! What a sucker punch. Round One goes to Jesus.
Now, round two – Jesus’ encounter with the Crowd. Here the crowd listening in are all the pilgrims who’ve traveled to the feast. They are the ones who have divided opinions about Jesus. Some who are saying, “He is a good man.” And others who replied, “No he deceives people.” So here, after listening to Jesus take down the Jewish leaders, they attack Jesus’ credibility saying, You’re Not Right “You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
Since most of the crowd have come from villages outside of Jerusalem, they’re not privy to the religious insider’s conspiracy to kill Jesus. We can assume that they were taking up sides in the fight, and so they side with their teachers. After all, if what Jesus said was true about their teachers, it would also be true about them. So, they say the one thing that would put Him in His place: calling him ‘demon-possessed.’
So, what does Jesus do? Does He try to refute this slander? No, Jesus counters by discrediting their teachers of the law. Jesus’ counterpunch: “Your spiritual priorities are wrong.” Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all astonished. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath. Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the Law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.” John 7:21-24
Jesus did one miracle. He healed a man who’d been paralyzed for 38 years. He did this on the Sabbath. Now he reveals His expert knowledge of the Law by pointing out how the Jews do the same thing – they too have an exception for breaking the Sabbath Laws: when they circumcise a child on the Sabbath. Occasionally, circumcision had to be done on a Sabbath day. Under those circumstances an exception was made. So here, all that Jesus is doing is contrasting their exception with a greater exception: the need for mercy.
In doing this, Jesus reveals how the Jews had gotten so far off track. He reveals how their spiritual priorities had been flipped. To them the purpose of the law was about keeping the letter of the law. It was about keeping up religious appearances. The more self-righteous you are in keeping the letter of the law, the more you are right with God.
But Jesus reveals that they’ve lost sight of the purpose of the law: The purpose of the law was to reveal the need for mercy. Boom! Knockout punch! Jesus had met the need of the whole person when he healed on the Sabbath. The Jewish teachers had forgotten this. In fact, they were now anything but merciful. They were so deceived by their own self-righteousness that they squeezed out any room for mercy. They didn’t see the need for mercy. So, they didn’t give mercy to others. Nor did they ever speak mercy. They had no place for mercy in keeping the law. Why? Because they didn’t see their own need for mercy. All they saw was their self-righteousness and thought that was good enough. They were now experts at doing the opposite of mercy – they had become experts at judging you, if you failed to measure up to the letter of the law.
So then, Jesus tells them to stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment – to judge others according to mercy. By saying this, Jesus implies that they were the ones who were guilty of wrong judgment, and so he urges them to mend their ways – he urges them to reverse their spiritual priorities from being self-righteous judges, to become a people who give mercy.
Now, have Christians ever fallen into this trap? Have Christians ever gotten our spiritual priorities wrong my majoring on keeping the letter of the law – by being judgmental legalists? Sure. Perhaps you grew up in a Church that was all about following the rules in order to be accepted. Legalists will make you feel guilty for not attending worship every Sunday. Legalists will make you feel inferior if you don’t appear to be as mature as they are. Legalists will avoid people who are not like them. They aren’t friends with people who are far from God, because they are repulsed by their lifestyles. In fact, you will recognize a legalist by their critical or unloving attitude toward others. Not only that, but legalists have an unhealthy orientation to performance. They not only judge you for your sin but make themselves feel better for not falling to your level of sin. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus rebukes this form of self-righteousness with this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.” Luke 18:10-14
So what Jesus is telling us this morning is this: Jesus wants your spiritual priorities to line up with God’s. God didn’t send Jesus into the world come to condemn the world but to give mercy to those who need it. And we all need mercy. So, Jesus says to the crowd and to us: God cares more about how merciful you are then how righteous you act. So, “Stop judging by mere appearances and make a right judgment.” Round two goes once again to Jesus.
Now for round three – this time its Jesus verses the people of Jerusalem. By now most of the people of Jerusalem were aware of the religious opposition to Jesus. They’ve heard their leaders assault Jesus’ authority, they’ve heard the crowd try to discredit Jesus’ priorities, so now it’s their turn to attack Jesus’ identity. But this tactic is a little more subtle. They blame the incompetency of their leaders to do anything about Jesus and combine that with their own opinions about Jesus and reach their conclusion about Jesus, saying: “You’re not the Messiah.” We see that in verses 25-27 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Here He is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to Him. Have the authorities really concluded that He is the Christ? But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where He is from.” John 7:25-27
One theologian calls this group, a third group, the Jerusalem mob. They were not the instigators of the plot to arrest Jesus, but they knew about it, as their words here show us. Their question: “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? Looks for the answer, yes! They’re sure Jesus was the man. Why, then was no action taken? They were impressed with Jesus’ words and by his manner. He spoke openly despite the plan to kill him. So, they put two and two together. He was apparently immune from arrest, for no one even spoke to him, or took action against him. And so, they began to wonder whether this indicates that their leaders really know that he was the Christ…
But then they do a little reasoning of their own. They saw him as a man, a carpenter, a rabbi from Nazareth. So, they thought they had him pegged. They knew where He was from. But there was a popular tradition circulating saying that the Messiah would simply appear – that no one would know where he is from. This was just as mistaken as the belief that the Messiah would come as a great military leader to restore Israel’s greatness. At the same time, they chose to ignore clear Biblical teaching about the Micah’s prophecy of the Messiah: “But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me One who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.” Micah 5:2 So, since they didn’t really know Jesus’ true birthplace, they just assumed Jesus couldn’t possibly be the Messiah. And what I find interesting about this conclusion that ignored the clear teaching of Scripture – is that people still do this today. They’d rather listen to popular opinion, then do the work of digging into the Scriptures to discover what is clearly written. So once again, the people reject Jesus out of the ignorance of their own opinions.
To that comes Jesus’ Counterpunch: Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own, but He who sent me is true. You do not know Him, but I know Him because I am from Him, and He sent me. John 7:28-29 The Feast Fight is reaching its climax. You can almost feel Jesus’ frustration. He knows who He is and where He’s from. He’s clearly destroyed the arguments of the religious leaders and the crowd who’ve arrived for the Feast. But now the people of Jerusalem – those who should know better… think they know better than the Scriptures. To them JESUS CRIES OUT. He literally shouts to the crowd, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from.” This is a shout of intensity, of great emotion – the kind of shout that proclaims that what he is saying is of greater importance to what was said previously… But It’s shocking. It’s so shocking because it leaves no room for anyone to argue with Jesus. There could be no mistaking what Jesus is now saying. Jesus is declaring His divine origin and His divine mission. He is saying, “I know God and you do not.” His clear claim of deity was not meant to leave his listeners indifferent or questioning his origin. This was Jesus’ line in the sand. It was Jesus’ declaration of deity, and it begs for a reaction, and Jesus gets one. Here it is: At this they tried to seize Him, but no one laid a hand on him, because His hour had not yet come. Still, many in the crowd put their faith in Him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will He do more miraculous signs than this man?” John 7:30
So now we know why Jesus didn’t go up to the Feast till the middle of the week. For now, that he’s arrived on the scene he’s set the record straight. He’s defended His teaching – His teaching was from God. He’s defended His healing – His healing was from the merciful heart of God. And now He’s defended His identity – He Himself has come from God. They thought they knew who Jesus was, but Jesus has set them straight, showing them that the basis of their faith was wrong, that the priorities of their religion was wrong, and who they thought him to be was wrong. So, what happens next? They’re not happy with anything Jesus has said, so they try to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because His hour had not yet come. Still, many in the crowd put their faith in Him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will He do more miraculous signs than this man?” The feast fight was over, but the battle for faith was just beginning.
For some their hatred of Jesus was ignited with this fight. But here’s the deal with this fight. Jesus was fighting too. He was fighting false faith, He was fighting empty religion, and He was fighting for you. And the good news from this fight – is that some believed. Some listened to the words of Jesus and His words ignited their faith.
So that’s where we’re going to end this morning: with this fight for your faith. Could it be that some of you here today have been fighting faith? Maybe your fight has been over whether you can surrender your will to God’s will? Surrender is hard, because you have to give up control. It’s hard to trust your life with someone you don’t really know. But surrender is easy when you begin to understand how much God loved you by sending Jesus to die for you. Maybe it’s time you stop fighting God and surrender your will to His.
Or maybe your fight has been over what you perceive to be true religion? Maybe you’ve thought religion is all about keeping rules and doing the right things? But perhaps after today, you’re beginning to understand that the religion God offers is one that centers on mercy, on helping those in need. And if you are starting to understand this, the heart of the Gospel is that God sent Jesus to help you with your greatest need: to be forgiven, so He could reconcile you to a life you were created to enjoy with Him. Maybe it’s time to stop fighting so hard and receive the tender mercy He offers you through Jesus.
Or maybe your fight’s been over what you believe about Jesus? Who is Jesus? Is he just a man who did some good things, or is He really who He says He is – the Son of God sent from heaven to give you mercy? Who is Jesus? That’s the greatest question you can ever answer. And if Jesus has convinced you that He is worthy of your trust, then will you put your faith in Him, right now, today and receive the mercy He gives?
Jesus won this fight, but has He won your heart?
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