SERMON OUTLINE:
His character (vs 10-13)
His doctrine (vs 14-18)
His works (vs 19-24)
His origin (vs 25-31)
SERMON BODY
• ill: It is said that Socrates taught for 40 years,
• Plato for 50, Aristotle for 40, and Jesus for only 3.
• Yet the influence of Christ’s 3-year ministry;
• Far exceeds the impact left by the combined 130 years of teaching;
• From these men who were among the greatest philosophers of all history.
• ill: Jesus painted no pictures;
• Yet, some of the finest paintings of Raphael, Michelangelo,
• And Leonardo da Vinci received their inspiration from Him.
• ill: Jesus wrote no poetry; but Dante, Milton,
• And scores of the world’s greatest poets were inspired by Him.
• ill: Jesus composed no music; still Haydn, Handel, Beethoven, Bach,
• And Mendelssohn reached their highest perfection in praise to Him.
• Every sphere of human greatness has been enriched by Jesus Christ.
• Jesus is exceptional , matchless, unique among all people who ever lived.
• TRANSITION: As we look at John chapter 7;
• We will see again just why Jesus is exceptional among all who have ever lived.
As we break into this chapter,
• The Jewish leaders have seen signs and miracles,
• They have listened to his claims and heard his sermons.
• Yet, instead of belief there is unbelief and opposition.
• Quote: The saying is true;
• “The same sun that melts the ice, hardens the clay and the same Gospel;
• Which melts some persons to repentance hardens others in their sins"
(1). His Character (vs 10-13)
“However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 11 Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, ‘Where is he?’
12 Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, ‘He is a good man.’
Others replied, ‘No, he deceives the people.’ 13 But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.”
• When the Feast of Tabernacles (or Booths) began,
• All eyes were looking for Jesus.
• The crowd were fascinated by this miracle working preacher,
• And they had never seen anyone stand up to the religious leaders like Jesus did!
• There is no doubt that Jesus had aroused the interest of crowd,
• He was the talk of the town.
• And not just the public crowds, the Jewish leaders were also looking for Him.
• In fact, the text tells us that it was continuous – “they kept searching for Him”.
• These Jewish leaders were now fully against Him
• Because Jesus had healed people on the Sabbath (e.g. John chapter 5),
• So there is a division in Jerusalem about Jesus.
• Some are calling Him good;
• But others believe Him to be a cunning deceiver.
Notice:
• The opposition to Jesus in Jerusalem has gotten so strong;
• That even His friends did not possess the confidence to speak of Him openly.
• Anyone that was for Jesus was reduced to hushed tones.
• It is in this atmosphere that Jesus appears.
• They may question his reputation,
• But they could not question his character!
Quote: William Hersey Davis.
• (Former professor of New Testament interpretation at,
• The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary)
• Character is the one thing we make in this world and take with us into the next.
• The circumstances amid which you live determine your reputation;
• The truth you believe determines your character.
• Reputation is what you are supposed to be;
• Character is what you are.
• Reputation is the photograph;
• Character is the face.
• Reputation comes over one from without;
• Character grows up from within.
• Reputation is what you have when you come to a new community;
• Character is what you have when you go away.
• Reputation is made in a moment;
• Character is built in a lifetime.
• Your reputation is learned in an hour;
• Your character doesn’t come to light for a year.
• Reputation grows like a mushroom;
• Character grows like the oak.
• A single newspaper report gives you your reputation;
• A life of toil gives you your character.
• Reputation makes you rich or makes you poor;
• Character makes you happy or makes you miserable.
• Reputation is what men say about you on your tombstone;
• Character is what angels say about you before the throne of God.
• TRANSITION: Jesus did not care about his reputation (opinion of men),
• Because he knew his character was good (pleasing to God)
• APPLICATION: Let’s strive to get our priorities right;
• We need to work on our character more than our reputation.
(2). His Doctrine (vs 14-18)
“Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man get such learning without having been taught?’
16 Jesus answered, ‘My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.”
• When Jesus appeared at the feast and started to teach,
• The reaction to his teaching is stunning.
• The Jewish leaders ask a question: “How does this man know his scriptures so well?”
Ill:
• On Wednesday evening I was with Paul Jones and his wife Fiona Hendly Jones.
• Paul was formerly lead singer of pop group, ‘Manfred Mann’
• And his wife was and is a West End actress.
• They did an interview of how they were converted to Christ and then they sang,
• The moment Fiona stood up and simply moved her arms, you knew she had been trained,
• And that voice boy could she sing.
• This lady was not self-taught, she had spent forty plus years in West End productions,
• And you could tell straight away she was a class act!
• TRANSITION: When Jesus started to speak,
• People knew he was a class act, he had authority and wisdom but where did he get it!
• There was no natural explanation for the knowledge he had;
• The Jewish leaders knew that he did not have the credentials.
• He had not gone to the proper rabbinical schools or sat at the feet of a great Jewish Rabbi
• Yet, Jesus taught with authority.
• This was so different from the other rabbis.
• They taught from authorities, not with authority.
• Jesus was a refreshing difference.
• But his critics had a hard time swallowing this difference.
Note:
• Jesus explains the reason why his teaching is unique and different;
• He says that the source of his teaching is divine in both its origin and in its nature.
• His teaching is not His own, it comes the Father.
• And it was something that each listener could know.
(A). THE SECRET OF KNOWING GOD’S WILL IS BY DOING IT.
Ill:
• A doctor might learn the technique of surgery from textbooks.
• He might know the theory of every possible operation.
• But that would not make him a good surgeon;
• He has to learn by doing.
Ill:
• A mechanic might learn the technique of how a car engine works from textbooks.
• In theory he might know the theory of every possible repair and adjustment;
• But that would not make him an engineer;
• He has to learn by doing.
Jesus tells his listeners (Jewish leaders with the crowd listening in):
• We can never understand God by theory alone;
• We must have the desire to apply his truth to our lives;
• It is the doing that’s important!
• And God’s Word proves itself true to those who sincerely do it.
• When we practice what He says, the evidence becomes internal and very persuasive.
• With every act of obedience,
• The truth of what Jesus says becomes more and more persuasive.
(B). JESUS THEN GOES ON TO EXPLAIN THAT HE IS NOT SEEKING THE APPLAUSE OF PEOPLE.
• This was in contrast to the religious leaders of his day;
• They loved to be noticed by others.
• ill: The religious leaders loved the best seats in the synagogues.
• ill: The religious leaders loved to be seen praying,
• So they stood openly on street corners.
• ill: The religious leaders loved to wear distinct clothing;
• That set them apart from other people.
• ill: The religious leaders boasted in their giving and made a show of it;
• They also boasted and their good deeds, so that people would be impressed!
• TRANSITION:
• Jesus then goes on to explain that He is not seeking the applause of people.
• If He was he would have gone up to the feast with his brothers;
• And entered Jerusalem to a fanfare of applause and commotion.
• Instead, he is determined only to win the approval of his heavenly Father;
• His is the only opinion that counts.
Ill:
• Arlo my son plays trumpet in two orchestras,
• Whenever we go to see a concert at the end when everyone is clapping,
• He is not really bothered,
• He looks over to mum and dad and wants their approval!
• TRANSITION: Jesus was only interested in the approval of his heavenly Father;
• His is the only judgement that counts.
• APPLICATION: Let’s strive to get our priorities right;
• We must aim in life to please God rather than people.
(3). His works (vs 19-24)
“Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?’
20 ‘You are demon-possessed,’ the crowd answered. ‘Who is trying to kill you?’
21 Jesus said to them, ‘I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.’”
• Jesus never sought to be "politically correct."
• He did not say what people wanted to hear, instead he said what was true.
• He did not adapt to people;
• Rather he expected people to adapt to respond to God's truth as he spoke it.
• Jesus made statements that require us to respond.
• The way we respond divides us.
• We can either accept the truth or reject it.
• If we try to ignore it, that is a form of rejection.
• That happened in New Testament days and it is still happening today!
• Ill: Example of Ziggy Rogoff (Messianic Jew).
IN VERSE 20: SOME IN THE CROWD INTERRUPT JESUS;
• 20"You are demon-possessed," the crowd answered. "Who is trying to kill you?"
• The crowd are unaware of the spiteful hatred of their leaders.
• They are not yet aware of their leaders plans to eliminate Jesus.
• They assume he has a persecution mania,
• That his imagination is distorted & his mind upset.
• They reason like this because they are unaware of the facts;
• As the saying goes; “Time will tell” and time will indeed prove Jesus right.
• Jesus has a bigger argument to win;
• And so he reveals a number of facts to the Jewish leaders:
(a). They were completely inconsistent and blatantly hypocritical in their treatment towards him.
• He uses an example from the Law of Moses.
• The Law said that all boys must be circumcised on the eighth day.
• Obviously for some baby boys this will fall on the Sabbath.
• Even though it is not ‘life-threatening’ they allow medical attention (circumcision)
• To take place
• Remember circumcision actually takes away something from the body.
• It is a negative act not a healing or positive act.
So the argument of Jesus is not only logical it is unanswerable:
• You mutilate on the Sabbath but condemn me for healing on the Sabbath.
• You are happy to make one part of the body right before God,
• But criticise me for making the entire body whole before God.
• ill: you are happy to apply a plaster to a cut, but not a bandage or plaster a broken leg!
• Which is the biggest need and the greater help to the individual?
• The logic of the Jewish leaders was rapidly falling apart.
• So Jesus places one more final challenge to them…
(b). Righteousness is to be based on substance, not appearance.
• They needed to get their values straight.
• The values of the Jewish leaders had been shallow;
• And was all about the outward appearance.
• They had completely missed the spirit of the law,
• And thus, God’s point of view.
Ill:
• In 1689 the architect Sir Christopher Wren;
• Designed the interior of Windsor Town Hall near London,
• He built a ceiling supported by pillars.
• After city fathers had inspected the finished building,
• They decided the ceiling would not stay up;
• And so they ordered Wren to put in some more pillars.
• England's greatest architect didn't think the ceiling needed any more support,
• So he pulled a fast one.
• He added four pillars that did not do anything;
• In fact they don't even reach the ceiling.
• The optical illusion fooled the municipal authorities,
• And today the four sham pillars amuse many a tourist.
• TRANSITION:
• The right appearance does not mean it contains the right substance.
• The Jewish leaders outwardly looked the part.
• ill: Rolls Royce cars with Reliant Robin Engines.
• ill: In contrast Jesus looked like a Reliant Robin (ordinary man);
• But inside he had a Rolls Royce engine.
• APPLICATION: Let’s strive to get our priorities right;
• Impressing others will give us a big ego and an empty heart.
• But seeking to please God will give us a full heart and a balanced ego.
(4). His origin (vs 25-31)
“At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, ‘Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.’
28 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 authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.’
30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31 Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, ‘When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?’”
• The crowd of people;
• Had never seen anyone speak the religious leaders the way Jesus did.
• There was a name for anyone who crossed these religious Mafia;
• It was called, ‘victim’
• You never did it a second time!
• So as Jesus debates with the religious leaders,
• A thought suddenly struck the crowd:
“Can it be that after all this man is the Messiah, the Anointed One of God,
And that the authorities know it?”
• But no sooner had the thought struck them than it was dismissed.
• Their objection was that they knew where Jesus had come from:
• There was no mystery about the background of Jesus.
• He was the illegitimate carpenters son, from Nazareth.
• They knew that was his home town;
• They knew who his parents and who his brothers and sisters were,
• They could name them!
• The popular idea among the Jews was that the Messiah was waiting concealed:
• And some day he would burst suddenly upon the world:
• And no one would know where he had come from.
Note:
• The one thing they knew about the coming Messiah,
• Would be that he would be born in Bethlehem, David’s town,
• But they believed that was the only thing you could know about him,
• Everything else was a mystery, until he exploded on the scene.
• Quote: There was a rabbinic saying:
“Three things come wholly unexpectedly, the Messiah, a godsend, and a scorpion.”
• To the Jews, the Messiah would appear as suddenly as a man stumbles on a godsend,
• Or steps on a hidden scorpion.
• So Jesus did not fit their expectations of Messiah:
• Jesus did not measure up to that kind of standard, i.e. A sudden mysterious appearing.
• To the Jews there was no mystery about where he came from.
So Jesus answers to those objections (vs 28-29):
28While Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he called out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from. But I represent one you don’t know, and he is true. 29I know him because I have come from him, and he sent me to you.”
• Jesus raises his voice and makes two statements,
• Both of which shocked the people and the authorities.
FIRST: He makes an ironic statement.
Quote William Hendiksen comments on verse 28:
“One can also read the exclamation as a question; thus:
“So you know me, and you know where I am from?”
Either way, the meaning is the same. Jesus ridicules the very idea that these biased, legalistic materialistic citizens of Jerusalem would actually KNOW him and his origin!”
• Jesus ironically is saying; “You know me, that’s what you think!”
• Many of the great commentators i.e. John Calvin;
• All believe that Jesus was speaking here in a tone of irony.
• The people of Jerusalem had a limited knowledge of Jesus,
• You and I of course have hindsight and the gospels and the New Testament.
SECOND: Jesus gives them a truthful answer (vs 29).
• Jesus explained to them that the reason they did not know him,
• Was that they did not know “The Father”.
• In other words he said that they did not know God but he did.
• It was a bitter insult to tell God’s chosen people that they did not know God.
• It was an incredible claim to make that Jesus alone knew him,
• That he stood in a unique relationship to him.
• Then if he had not insultaed them enough he went on to say….
• That he not only knew the Father but that he was sent by the father!
• Now if this was video and not text;
• You would see steam coming out of the ears of the religious leaders,
• And anger written all over their faces!
Verse 30 illustrates the fact that Jesus spoke the truth and that he was on his Father’s business:
Then the leaders tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him,
because his time had not yet come.
• Jesus was on his Father’s business:
• He would not be arrested or even die a premature death,
• As he trusted in “The father”
• Hhe would know “The Father’s” protection, timing and leading.
This verse is one of the great turning-points in Jesus’ life:
• Up to this point the authorities had looked on him as a revolutionary Sabbath breaker,
• Which itself was a serious enough charge;
• But from now on he was guilty not only of Sabbath-breaking,
• But a much worse crime, the ultimate sin, of blasphemy.
• As they saw it he was talking of Israel and of God
• As no human being had any right to speak.
Application:
• This of course is precisely the choice which is still before humanity today:
• Either, what Jesus said about himself is false,
• In which case he is guilty of such blasphemy as no man ever dared utter;
• Or, what he said about himself is true,
• In which case he is what he claimed to be;
• And he can therefore be described in no other terms than the Son of God.
• Every man has to decide for or against Jesus Christ.
Quote C.S. Lewis:
“I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.” That is the one thing we must not say.
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell.
You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God; or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God.
But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Quote the great Methodist preacher Dr Sangster:
• “If Christ was a man his death was murder.
• If he was God it was an offering.
• If he was a man it was martyrdom.
• If he was God it was a sacrifice.
• If he was a man they took his life from him,
• If he was God he laid it down himself.
• If he was a man we are called to admiration.
• If he was God we are called to adoration.
• If he was a man we must stand up and take our hats off.
• If he is God we must fall down and give him our hearts.”
• TRANSITION: The greatest question we ever have to answer:
• “Who is Jesus Christ?”
• Our response to that answer affects both this life and the whole of eternity!!!
SERMON AUDIO:
https://surf.pxwave.com/wl/?id=M3UPvvPBOAXTGymD0pUa5Pfq0USHovCc
