Today, we are continuing our series in the book of John. We will be in other passages the next few weeks, as I am out of town. However, we pick up in John 7, where Jesus is in Jerusalem for the Feast of Booths.

I want to reintegrate you to the context of this passage. The feast celebrated Yahweh’s provision for the people of Israel as they were delivered from Egypt and brought to 40 years of wandering in the desert. During those 40 years, God was forming for himself a people to bring into the Promised Land— Canna. Specific rituals during the feast pointed to the ways God provided for his people during this wandering. The Feast of Booths celebrated God’s provision of both water and light. Water was provided through the rock, struck by Moses, and light was provided by a pillar of fire that led them by night, protected them from foreign enemies. Israel would sing the Hallel Psalms at the major feasts, which acknowledged God as their provider, their protector, their source of blessing, provision, life, and salvation through the desert wandering.

Recall that tensions were high in Israel. There was great Messianic expectation for the people of Israel to be delivered from—once again, the largest and most powerful empire the world had known to that date. God seems to act for His people and for His name when the opposition is at its fullest strength. Jesus was healing the sick, raising the dead, and feeding the thousands. He seemed like the natural choice for a military leader to lead the nation against Rome! The people where thronging to him. Jesus had many harsh words for the religious leaders, the Pharisees and Sadducees, and they were losing influence, and were jealous from the outset. Not far into the gospel of John, we see plans made by the religious leaders to capture and kill Jesus.The Son of God who is God, knew the heart and thought of man. That is why we read, on many occasion, that Jesus slipped into the crowd, and escaped the people for his time had not yet come.

In fact, Jesus used these words when he told his brothers to go up to this feast without him— His time had not yet come. He knew the time of his crucifixion was coming, but not yet. However, his time, the hour, was inevitable. He traveled up to the feast by stealth, and half way through the feast he openly taught in the synagogue. By the end of the feast he was shouting. This is where we begin reading today.Passage:

John 7:37–52

[37] On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. [38] Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” [39] Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. (ESV)

[40] When they heard these words, some of the people said, “This really is the Prophet.” [41] Others said, “This is the Christ.” But some said, “Is the Christ to come from Galilee? [42] Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” [43] So there was a division among the people over him. [44] Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him.

[45] The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” [46] The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!” [47] The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? [48] Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? [49] But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” [50] Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, [51] “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” [52] They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” (ESV)

We are going to look at the passage under the following headings:

Prophet, Christ, or Poser?

No One Ever Spoke Like This Man

The Matter of the Law

A Light in Galilee

Injustice That Saved the Guilty

[Pray]

Was Jesus — the Prophet, the Christ, or a Poser? (v40-44)

The crowd was participating in a skill we would call verbal processing— it was how they established their “group thinking.” They were trying to determine who Jesus was, and how he fit into their understanding of prophetic figures. 

No one had done miracles or spoken like this man. Was he the Prophet? Or the Christ? Or a fake! In their mind, these were distinguishable figures. The people of Israel had this discussion with John the Baptist (Jhn 1:25), and asked if he was the prophet Elijah, or the Prophet, or the Christ. It was understood that the prophet Elijah was to resurrect or for some prophet to come in his line and power before the Christ. Jesus later told his disciples that John was the figure of Elijah the scriptures foretold, but he was not the prophet.  

Who was the Prophet? he was the one God promised to Moses in Dt 18:15–19:

[15] “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen… [18] I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. [19] And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 

So, to believe Jesus was the prophet would be an astute assumption. Jesus fed the thousands in the wilderness, just as God fed the Israelites, under Moses. Jesus taught, in Matthew 5, on a mountain, and gave the beatitudes, just as Moses came down the mountain with the Law. Jesus claimed to speak the words he heard from the Father, to be one sent from the Father, just as a prophet would be. And there is an expectation that the people of Israel listen to the Prophet, for God will require it of them, and they will be responsible if they don’t.

Was Jesus the Prophet? By all means, many said yes! But is that all he was? As the crowd asked, could he be the messiah? And when the Christ comes, will he do more signs than [Jesus]? (Jhn 7:31)

Was Jesus the fulfillment of the eschatological figure of the Christ, the Messiah? 

First, the Christ means the Anointed One. When God called Samuel, the prophet, to call David as king over Israel, he took a hollowed horn, filled with oil, and poured it over his head. Thus, the Christ, or The Anointed One of Israel is the King set forth by God. And the promise to David was that a king would be anointed from his line, and that king would reign as king forever.  We read this in …

2 Samuel 7:12–16

[12] When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. [13] He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. … [16] And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”

So this king, the Christ, the Anointed One, must be of the line of David. In fact, there are several prophecies about this King that the Christ would have to fulfill. He would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2), A descendant of Abraham (Gen 12:1-3), born of a virgin (Isa 7:14), God become flesh (Isa 9). And the Christ would become King of Israel. The expectation was that he would slay their enemies, and they would once again dwell as the premier empire of the world, as they were under David and Solomon. 

But, according to the eye, Jesus didn’t measure up to their expectations. He hailed from Nazareth, not Bethlehem. He hung out in Galilee. He’d not been trained by the rabbis, but was a backwater theologian. And they knew his mother Mary. She was pregnant before Joseph married her. Jesus might not even be fully Jewish, according to some of the pharisees. The crowds didn’t know, and it’s interesting that Jesus didn’t sit down and give his birth narrative… or the flight from Bethlehem to Egypt, or their return and why they went to Galilee. He fulfilled all the prophesies of the Christ, and he remained silent. But Jesus did tell them his origin: he told them again and again— “the Father has sent me” (Jhn 5:36, 8:23). Jesus spoke in John 3:31–36

[31] He who comes from above is above all. He who is of the earth belongs to the earth and speaks in an earthly way. He who comes from heaven is above all. [32] He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony. [33] Whoever receives his testimony sets his seal to this, that God is true. [34] For he whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit without measure. [35] The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. [36] Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. (ESV)

And He called them to judge with right judgement, and to believe because of his word and his signs. Still, many believed Jesus was not the Christ. They believed he was a 

Poser: When someone proclaims to be someone they are not, it is a grievous thing. Not only is it a lie, they lead people astray. And for one to proclaim to be a prophet in Israel, when they in fact are not, the penalty for such a lie is death. Here are the next few verses of Dt 18:

[20] But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in my name that I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die.’ [21] And if you say in your heart, ‘How may we know the word that the LORD has not spoken?’—[22] when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the word does not come to pass or come true, that is a word that the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously. You need not be afraid of him. (ESV)

It’s such a grievance that God calls the people of Israel to enforce capital punishment upon one who claims falsely to speak for him. We must understand that for Jesus to proclaim to be whom he said he was, and if he indeed was not the Christ, the Son of God, then his punishment was just, for he committed a grievous evil. We must come to grips with what it meant for Jesus to claim to speak for God, and the weight of his words. We cannot accept merely some of his teachings; the Bible is not a buffet line of ideas you can choose to put on your plate. It all speaks to Jesus, and he says you either eat all of me or none of me. And his claim was that he was and is the Christ, the Son of God, the Prophet who speaks for God.

CS Lewis, in his book, Mere Christianity, put it this way: “I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 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 the 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.”

The people of Israel didn’t see that Jesus was both Prophet and Christ, or that both of those figures were fulfilled in one person, and they must listen to Him!

And friends, they were without excuse, are are we, for…

"No One Ever Spoke Like This Man” (45-46)

I think we, in the west, have been anesthetized to the power of the words of Jesus. We don’t understand that much of the good in Western civilization was due to the Christianizing of our culture. Every good moral law has its root in the principles of Jesus, from the abolition of slavery to the equal and fair treatment of women, to the kindness we teach our children to show each other, to the servant leadership taught in business practices, to personal and corporate ethics. They all find their roots in the powerful words of Jesus that have shaped nations. Friends, when we see injustice, that’s not from the words of Jesus, that’s from the actions of sinful man. 

When Jesus stood and cried out, shouted if you will, ““If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. [38] Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” People were shocked. Jesus claimed to be the dispenser of the Spirit of God. He spoke with such power that the very men who were sent to arrest him were stopped dead in their tracks. Look at verse 45: The officers then came to the chief priests and Pharisees, who said to them, “Why did you not bring him?” The officers answered, “No one ever spoke like this man!”

They didn’t know what him them. All they could say was, “No one has ever spoke like him!”

When someone speaks like this, you listen. You stop, sit, and listen.

Friends, do you see see the words of Jesus? When you read his words, are you dumbfounded? Are you awestruck by their power and beauty? Are you convicted, pricked at heart? You should be. We should be. And yet, that is not everyone’s response. The pharisees, blind and deaf to the power of the word of God, decided to make this a…The Matter of the Law

Look at verse 47: The Pharisees answered them, “Have you also been deceived? [48] Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him? [49] But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” [50] Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, [51] “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?”

Notice the reaction of the pharisees to their own officers! First, the inclination was not to know what he said, but that they had been deceived.  Their ears did not want to hear. Moreso, they make themselves the judge of Jesus before they hear him out. They ask, somewhat presumptuously, “Have any of the authorities or the Pharisees believed in him?” They determine themselves to be the one who anoints the king of Israel, not God through his prophets! How was David anointed? Through Samuel. Whom did God send ahead of Jesus? John the Baptist. John proclaimed that Jesus was the Son of God, the Lamb of God who came to take away the sin of the world. He pointed to Jesus as the Christ, for he saw with the eyes of God. The Pharisees, and even the confused crowd, saw with the eyes of man. Jesus is the King of Israel, anointed with the Spirit of God, for John saw the Spirit descend on him when he baptized Jesus.

The Pharisees wrongly assumed they were the ones who decided who was Lord. They made themselves the interpreter of the Law, and would interpret it as they saw fit. They made judgements on Jesus. They made judgements on the crowd: but this crowd that does not know the law is accursed. That statement is true of all of humanity, friends. No one is justified by the law. All have sinned. All are guilty before God. All are accursed. The Pharisees held the position that their position saved them. And they had already sent officers to arrest Jesus for they had already condemned him, believing him to have led the people of Israel astray.

However, as they judged the crowd for not knowing the law, they themselves misapplied it! Nicodemus, good ol’ Nick, spoke out and asked the question— in defense of Jesus, “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” Remember Nick went to Jesus in John chapter 3. It was then Nick first learned that one must be born of the Spirit in order to see the Kingdom of God. Now, Jesus was offering the water of the Spirit! Nick was willing to listen, and was calling his fellow Pharisees to do the same. But the very Pharisees who condemned the people for not knowing the law, applied it incorrectly to Jesus in condemning him, and they themselves didn’t see that there was prophesied, in conjunction with the Messiah…A Light in Galilee

[52] They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” (ESV)

Galilee, a district north of Jerusalem. No other prophets are from Galilee. If Jesus were coming as a resurrected prophet, or in the power and name of a prophet, it would be logical that he would come from that prophet’s district, and that would have been prophesied! Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 9: 

[1]  But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.

[2]  The people who walked in darkness

have seen a great light;

those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,

on them has light shone.

[3] You have multiplied the nation;

you have increased its joy;

they rejoice before you

as with joy at the harvest,

as they are glad when they divide the spoil.

[4] For the yoke of his burden,

and the staff for his shoulder,

the rod of his oppressor,

you have broken as on the day of Midian.

[5] For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult

and every garment rolled in blood

will be burned as fuel for the fire.

[6] For to us a child is born,

to us a son is given;

and the government shall be upon his shoulder,

and his name shall be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God,

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

[7] Of the increase of his government and of peace

there will be no end,

on the throne of David and over his kingdom,

to establish it and to uphold it

with justice and with righteousness

from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this. (ESV)Jesus was not born in Galilee, but — as God had called the nation of Israel to be, and Jesus fulfilled it, he is a light to the Nations! And that light is none other than the Christ, the Anointed One of God, the Son of David, the Prophet who speaks the words of God.

Do you see it? Do you see His light?

And yet, the Pharisees considered him a poser. A liar. For as Isaiah prophesied, so the religious rulers acted:

Isaiah 53:1–6

[1] Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

[2] For he grew up before him like a young plant,

and like a root out of dry ground;

he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,

and no beauty that we should desire him.

[3] He was despised and rejected by men,

a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;

and as one from whom men hide their faces

he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

[4] Surely he has borne our griefs

and carried our sorrows;

yet we esteemed him stricken,

smitten by God, and afflicted.

[5] But he was pierced for our transgressions;

he was crushed for our iniquities;

upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,

and with his wounds we are healed.

[6] All we like sheep have gone astray;

we have turned—every one—to his own way;

and the LORD has laid on him

the iniquity of us all. (ESV)

The crowd was accursed… they were guilty… and Jesus, the Son of God, the Prophet, the Christ— him, they crucified. This was…The Injustice That Saved the Guilty

It was unjust that the curse you and I deserve was placed on the Christ. 

I recall with great clarity one of my surrogate mothers, mamma Ross, would tell her children (and me) that two wrongs don’t make a right. I believe they’d often reply, “but three lefts do!” 

This is the injustice that made for justice. This is the injustice that saved the guilty. For God sent his son to live in perfect obedience, to teach us of the Father, to be put to death by the hands of sinful man, so he might save an accursed people. 

You and I, in and of ourselves, are accursed people. We rebel against God’s authority. We explain away the commands of God and dismiss his word. We, like the pharisees, proclaim that we are the judge of what is right and wrong, that we interpret the law as it ought to be. 

But Jesus, the Son of God has come. And he spoke like no one has ever spoke. And he told of his death, and foretold of his resurrection 3 days later. All that he proclaimed had come true! And if his power over his own death was proven true, so will his power over our death be proven true! Here is the offer of Salvation: 

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…[37] All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out… For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.” (ESV)

What does it mean to believe in him? It means you hear his word, recognize your sin, that you are not the judge but He is, and that you then come to him as Lord and then you worship him. No one ever spoke like this man, and no man has ever risen from the grave on his own power. He is Prophet, He is Christ, and He is our Priest who bought us with his own blood.