Sunday Morning Bible Study

February 28, 2010

Introduction

Do people see Jesus? Is the gospel preached? Does it speak to the broken hearted? Does it build up the church? Milk – Meat – Manna Preach for a decision

It is the fall and many people are in Jerusalem to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot). The Feast was celebrated every year and it lasted for a week.

Last week we saw that Jesus’ brothers still did not believe in Him, but had tried to get Jesus to go to the Feast in Jerusalem in order to get a larger following. Jesus didn’t go with His brothers. He came to the feast after they did and did so secretly.

The people in Jerusalem had been asking questions about Jesus because they had all expected Him to show up.

:14-18 Recognizing the Truth

:14 Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught.

:14 temple – Don’t think of the temple as some kind of big church, with pews, and regular church services.

The temple itself was a central building that only the priests could enter. Around the temple were a series of open courtyards, and it’s within these courtyards that Jesus sat and began to teach the people.

:15 And the Jews marveled, saying, “How does this Man know letters, having never studied?”

marveled – thaumazo – to wonder, marvel

:15 letters – gramma – a letter; any writing; the sacred writings (of the OT).

The Scriptures were called the “holy letters”.

:15 studied – manthano – to learn; to increase one’s knowledge; be informed

:15 studied – This is the word that “disciple” comes from. Jesus had never been a “disciple” of any of the teachers in the Temple. There were something like thirty seminaries in Jerusalem at that time. Jesus had never gone to any of their classes.

Lesson

What do you know?

Even people who don’t claim to be Christians admit that Jesus said some pretty profound things. After He gave His famous “Sermon on the Mount” …

(Mt 7:28–29 NKJV) —28 And so it was, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His teaching, 29 for He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

The Jewish teachers of that day were known for teaching by quoting other Rabbis. But Jesus wasn’t quoting other Rabbis, He simply taught as if He knew what He was talking about.

He talked as if He actually KNEW God!

When Jesus was twelve years old, His parents took the family to Jerusalem during the Passover. They lost track of Jesus, but found Him later in the Temple:

(Lk 2:46–47 NKJV) —46 Now so it was that after three days they found Him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, both listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard Him were astonished at His understanding and answers.

Is it wrong to have an education?

Peter and John were not educated.

Most of the twelve disciples were not “educated” men. When Peter and John got into trouble for healing a lame man in the Temple and giving Jesus the credit for it, they had to defend themselves in a trial before the Sanhedrin:

(Ac 4:13 NKJV) —13 Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.

I find it interesting that some of the men God has used most in the Calvary Chapel movement were not originally very well educated.

Mike McIntosh was a guy who thought he had lost his mind on drugs.

Raul Ruiz was a guy from the barrio who spoke with a pretty heavy accent.

Greg Laurie never went past high school.

Though it is interesting that all these guys have worked hard of the years to grow in their education. All of them could put the title “Dr.” in front of their names if they wanted to.

Paul was an educated man.

Before becoming a Christian, Paul had been trained in the Scriptures by one of the greatest Jewish rabbis, Gamaliel:

(Ac 22:3 NKJV) “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel…

God used Paul’s training in the Scriptures. You can see Paul’s tremendous grasp of the Scriptures in the letters he writes.

Yet even Paul realized that all his “learning” was nothing compared to the one thing that was most important to know:

(Php 3:8 NKJV) Yet indeed I also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as rubbish, that I may gain Christ

The most important “knowledge” to Paul was knowing Christ. All that counts in life is knowing Jesus.

Not knowing about Jesus, but knowing Jesus.

Illustration

Have You Tasted My Jesus????

At the University of Chicago Divinity School each year they have what is called “Baptist Day”. It is a day when all the Baptists in the area are invited to the school because they want the Baptist dollars to keep coming in. On this day each one is to bring a lunch to be eaten outdoors in a grassy picnic area. Every “Baptist Day” the school would invite one of the greatest minds to lecture. One year they invited Dr. Paul Tillich. Dr. Tillich spoke for two and one-half hours proving that the resurrection of Jesus was false. He quoted scholar after scholar and book after book. He concluded that since there was no such thing as the historical resurrection the religious tradition of the church was groundless, emotional mumbo-jumbo, because it was based on a relationship with a risen Jesus, who, in fact, never rose from the dead in any literal sense. He then asked if there were any questions. After about 30 seconds, an old, dark skinned preacher with a head of short-cropped, woolly white hair stood up in the back. “Docta Tillich, I got one question,” he said as all eyes turned toward him. He reached into his sack lunch and pulled out an apple and began eating it. “Docta Tillich ...” CRUNCH, MUNCH ... “My question is a simple question, ”CRUNCH, MUNCH ...”Now I ain’t never read them books you read” ... CRUNCH, MUNCH ... “and I can’t recite the Scriptures in the original Greek” ...CRUNCH, MUNCH ... “I don’t know nothin’ about Niebuhr and Heidegger” ...CRUNCH, MUNCH ... He finished the apple. “All I wanna know is: This apple I just ate—was it bitter or sweet?” Dr. Tillich paused for a moment and answered in exemplary scholarly fashion: “I cannot possibly answer that question, for I haven’t tasted your apple.” The white-haired preacher dropped the core of his apple into his crumpled paper bag, looked up at Dr. Tillich and said calmly, “Neither have you tasted my Jesus.”

Are you a person who knows “about God”? Or are you a person who has actually come to know God?

This is what Jesus came for.

He died on a cross to pay for your sins and remove the one barrier that would keep you from knowing God.

He came that you might know God.

(Jn 17:3 NKJV) And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.

:16 Jesus answered them and said, “My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.

doctrine – didache – teaching; that which is taught

Everything Jesus has learned He’s learned from God.

:17 If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.

wills – thelo – to will, have in mind, intend; to purpose; to desire, to wish

will – thelema – what one wishes or has determined shall be done; will, choice, inclination, desire, pleasure

The Old King James is a little confusing here:

(Jn 7:17 KJV) If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself.

It makes it sound as if you have to actually do God’s will to know whether Jesus’ teaching is of God or not.

But what Jesus actually says is that you must be “willing” to do God’s will.

:17 wills to do – Jesus is saying that the key to knowing whether or not He is really teaching correctly about God is your heart. Do you really want to obey God?

Lesson

Willingness to obey

If you are really serious about knowing God and doing the right thing, then you will pay attention to the things that Jesus says. You will realize that Jesus is teaching you the right things about God.

People have a lot of reasons why they won’t say yes to Jesus.

Some people are not willing to give up their sin:

(Jn 3:20 NKJV) For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed.

In other words, they’re not ready to do the right thing. They would rather stay in darkness and keep their sin than acknowledge that they are in trouble and need God’s help.

Too often people just believe whatever they want to believe.

They only want to believe the things that make them feel good.

(2 Ti 4:3–4 NLT) —3 For a time is coming when people will no longer listen to sound and wholesome teaching. They will follow their own desires and will look for teachers who will tell them whatever their itching ears want to hear.4 They will reject the truth and chase after myths.

When you ask a person why they don’t believe in “hell”, they will usually say something like this, “Well I don’t think that a God of love would send anyone to hell”.

They are basing what they believe to be true upon what they “think” sounds good.

And they are willing to ignore Jesus, who warned us more about hell than any other person in the Bible. Why did He do this? Because He would die on a cross in order to keep you from going to hell. He wanted so badly for you to not go to hell that He died on a cross in your place to pay for your sins.

This is one of the keys to finding out what God’s will is for your life:

John Wesley - “This is a universal rule, with regard to all persons and doctrines. He that is thoroughly willing to do it, shall certainly know what the will of God is.”

Illustration:

There was a man who was walking along a narrow cliff on a dark night. It was so dark that he couldn’t see what was over the edge. Suddenly he slipped and found himself falling off the edge. As he started to fall, he caught something sticking out, and managed to just barely hang on. But there was nowhere to go. He didn’t have enough strength to climb back up. He cried out, “Oh God, if You’re really there, please help me!” Nothing. He cried out again, “Oh God, I’ll go to church every Sunday and read my Bible. Please help me!” Nothing. He cried out again, “Oh God, I’ll do whatever you tell me to. Just please help me!” And then he heard a still, small voice, “Just let go.” He thought about it a little bit. He cried out again, “Is there anybody else up there?”

Willingness

Do you take God seriously?

Are you really interested in doing what God wants for your life?

:18 He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.

If Jesus were just “self-taught” or maybe just a “genius” about spiritual things, He would be trying to point attention to Himself.

He would have gone to the feast with His brothers and spent a lot of time talking about all the good things He’s done.

But Jesus was trying to point people’s attention to God, the One who sent Him.

:19-24 Righteous Judgment

:19 Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?”

:19 none of you – It is the one who has the desire to obey the will of God that will recognize that Jesus is speaking the truth.

Yet in contrast, the Jews who already clearly have the word of God in the Law of Moses do not keep the Law.

In a sense, this is true about everyone. There is no one is able to fully keep the Law of Moses. Paul wrote,

(Ro 3:20 NLT) For no one can ever be made right with God by doing what the law commands. The law simply shows us how sinful we are.

I think Jesus is especially pointing this out to the Jews before Him because they are blind to the fact that the actual Son of God is the one speaking to them.

And to top it all off, they want to kill the Son of God.

They don’t believe Jesus because they really don’t want to do what God wants them to do.

In another place, Jesus said it this way:

(Mk 7:6–7 NLT) —6 Jesus replied, “You hypocrites! Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you, for he wrote,‘These people honor me with their lips,but their hearts are far from me.7 Their worship is a farce,for they teach man-made ideas as commands from God.’

:20 The people answered and said, “You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill You?”

:20 kill You?  - I think it’s funny that they deflect Jesus’ accusation that they don’t keep the law. Instead they respond to the accusation of trying to kill Jesus.

The crowd thinks that Jesus must be paranoid or crazy for thinking that someone wanted to kill Him. Yet in reality, whether the crowd realized it or not, the last time Jesus was in Jerusalem the Jewish leaders were starting to think about putting Jesus to death.

The last time Jesus was in Jerusalem, He had healed a lame man on the Sabbath.

Play “Bethesda Sabbath Healing” video clip

When the Jewish leaders got mad because He was breaking their Sabbath traditions, Jesus reasoned that since God didn’t stop working on Saturdays, that God’s Son wouldn’t stop working on Saturdays either.

(Jn 5:18 NKJV) Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God.

Keep in mind, Jesus didn’t break God’s Laws in healing the man on the Sabbath. He only broke the human traditions that had been built up over the years.

:21 Jesus answered and said to them, “I did one work, and you all marvel.

He’s talking about healing the man at Bethesda.

:22 Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath.

:22  circumcision – it actually started with Abraham, not Moses.

(Ge 17:12 NKJV) He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised, every male child in your generations…

Moses simply repeated Abraham’s law that a baby was to be circumcised on the 8^th day:

(Le 12:3 NKJV) And on the eighth day the flesh of his foreskin shall be circumcised.

If the baby boy was born on a Friday, then he would be circumcised eight days later on Saturday, the Sabbath.

:23 If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath?

:23 angry with Me? – When there was a conflict between keeping the Sabbath and circumcising a baby, the Jews felt that circumcision was more important, and they would break the Sabbath law in favor of circumcision.

The Jewish traditions were eventually recorded in the “Mishnah”. The Mishnah stated (Shabbat 18.3; 19.1, 2; and m. Nedarim 3.11) that the command to circumcise (Lev. 12:3) was so important that it overrode the command to observe the Sabbath.

They would make an exception to their traditions by circumcising a baby boy on the Sabbath, yet they couldn’t conceive of making an exception by healing a man.

There’s a little bit of irony here. Circumcision is an act that cuts a man in a very private place. It causes a lot of pain.

Jesus didn’t cut anyone. In fact, He healed a man.

It’s as if Jesus is saying, “So you can hurt a man on the Sabbath, but you can’t heal him?”

Lesson

God versus tradition

Some people have the craziest traditions.

Illustration

Wisconsin winters are brutally cold. But that doesn’t stop hundreds of daring souls from jumping into the icy waters of Lake Michigan on New Year’s Day. Yes, it’s the annual Polar Bear Swim in Sheboygan, where every January 1, at precisely 1 p.m., some 450 fearless folks dive right in for a frigid dip. One description of the yearly splashdown says that “most are costumed, all are crazy.” I won’t argue with that, but I’m not about to tell these people to chill out!

"Strange World," Campus Life, Vol. 55, no. 6.

Jesus was constantly challenging the Jewish teachers on how their man-made traditions often contradicted the ways of God.

They had traditions about tithing.

(Lk 11:42 NLT) “What sorrow awaits you Pharisees! For you are careful to tithe even the tiniest income from your herb gardens, but you ignore justice and the love of God. You should tithe, yes, but do not neglect the more important things.

They had tithing down pat. They even gave a “tithe” from their spice garden.

This is one of the problems with men’s traditions – we focus on the wrong things. We focus on small minute things when God wants us to be concerned about important things like justice and mercy.

Back in the 60’s and 70’s some people began to change some of the traditions at church.

In some churches, the only music you listened to is organ music.

In some churches, everybody had to dress up in their “Sunday Best”.

In some churches, that all got changed. Instead of an organ there were guitars. Instead of fancy clothes, there were hearts touched by God. Play “Alleluia” clip.

Tradition isn’t necessarily wrong.

But sometimes it doesn’t hurt to examine your traditions, especially when they come in conflict with God’s Word and God’s heart.

For the Jews in the time of Jesus, their concept of the Sabbath was more important than a man being healed.

:24 Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

:24 judge – krino – to separate, choose; to approve

It’s all about making decisions. How do you make your decisions?

Do you make your decisions based on how things look from the outside? Or do you make decisions based on how things actually are?

appearance – opsis – sight; face; the outward appearance, look

righteous – dikaios – upright; innocent, faultless

Lesson

Righteous judgment

Things aren’t always what they seem …

Illustration

A Tale of Faulty Inferences

It’s WWII. A train rushes across the Hungarian countryside. In a compartment sit a mother with her attractive daughter, a Nazi officer, and a Hungarian official. When the train passes through a tunnel, the compartment is engulfed in darkness. Suddenly there is the sound of a loud kiss followed by a shattering slap. When the train emerges from the tunnel, no one says a word, but the Nazi officer’s face bears the unmistakable signs of having been slapped. The mother looks at her daughter and thinks, “What a good daughter I have. She certainly showed that Nazi he can’t fool with her.” The daughter looks at her mother and thinks, “Mother sure is brave to take on a Nazi officer over one stolen kiss.” The Nazi officer stares at the Hungarian official and thinks, “That Hungarian is clever. He steals a kiss and gets me slapped, and there’s nothing I can do about it.” The Hungarian official stares blankly as he thinks, “Not bad. I kiss my hand and get away with slapping a Nazi.”

Objectivity or Subjectivity

In our premarital course, we’ve been looking at various personality traits and how they affect relationships, in particular, marriage.

One of the traits we’ve looked at is that of Objectivity.

An “objective” person is one who is able to put aside their emotions a little and be able to make decisions based on facts, not on feelings.

A “subjective” person (the opposite of objective) is one who may from time to time get their decision making process short-circuited by feelings like suspicion, jealousy, or being overly sensitive.

For example, some of us struggle from time to time with being just a little bit too sensitive. We get our feelings hurt from the smallest of things. It might be a person who says we don’t look good in that particular color. It might be somebody commenting that you look like you’ve put on a few pounds. It might simply be a person who looks in your direction and frowns a little.

The truth is that if these kinds of things upset me, it’s possible that the problem is not the other people, the problem might be “me”. Maybe there’s a reason.  Maybe I have been hurt by a friend. Maybe I have been abused. But the problem is my judgment could be a little “off”.

Are you a person that others have to “walk on eggshells” around? Are you even aware of it?

Could it possibly be that from time to time I make “decisions” and “judgments” about things that are simply wrong?

Solomon wrote,

(Pr 18:13 NKJV) He who answers a matter before he hears it, It is folly and shame to him.

Sometimes we hear a little about some situation and rush off to do something about it without hearing the whole message.

Today you have to be careful even when you’re watching the “News”.

Most of what we see and hear on the news is not fact, it’s opinion. It’s important to realize that most news networks have their agendas and they tend to “spin” things the way they want you to hear it.

And I’m not just talking about the liberal news networks. Sometimes it seems the conservative networks are just as bad at spinning things.

How do you handle rumors? How do you handle a “bad report” about another person? Sometimes we judgmental Christians are the first to believe the worst.

Years ago there was a rumor that the president of Proctor and Gamble was a Satan worshipper, that they had satanic on their products, and a portion of their prophets went to support the occult. The rumor was that this had been exposed on the Donahue show.

Many Christians responded by boycotting Proctor and Gamble.

But no such thing ever occurred. It was a bad, stupid rumor, and we judgmental Christians jumped on the wrong bandwagon.

Illustration

The Town Gossip

Joan, the town gossip and self-appointed supervisor of the town’s morals, kept sticking her nose into other people’s business. Several local residents were unappreciative of her activities, but feared her enough to maintain their silence. However, she made a mistake when she recently accused George, a local man, of being an alcoholic after she saw his pickup truck parked outside the town’s only bar one afternoon. George, a dedicated Christian and man of few words, stared at her for a moment and just walked away without saying a word. Later that evening, he parked his pickup truck in front of her house and left it there all night. Her gossiping ceased.

Are you angry with someone right now?

What if some of the things you believe about them are wrong or misunderstood?

Illustration

The other day I went outside to get the newspaper, but it wasn’t there.  So I called up the newspaper’s customer service desk.  “Where’s my Sunday paper?” I yelled.  “I’m sorry Mr. Cathers,” the polite young man replied, “but today is Saturday.  The Sunday paper is not delivered until Sunday.”  “Oh,” I said sheepishly, “Well that explains why no one was at church today…”

Judge with righteous judgment.