Jesus forces the issue: is He a good man, con-man, mad-man, or God-man? (7:1-52)

The first Passover mentioned in John's gospel, was the one when Jesus cleansed the temple. Then, after covering Nicodemus, the woman at the well, and the man healed at Bethesda, we hear of another Passover at the time of the feeding of the five thousand. Following that, there was the great controversy about His claim to be the bread from heaven, and at that point, many of Jesus’s Galilean disciples turn back from following him.  It seems that He continued his Galilean ministry for a further six months, but in a much less high-profile manner. He didn't want to return to Judea, where He was a marked man (5:18).

As summer turned to autumn, His siblings began planning for the annual trip to the week-long Feast of Tabernacles in Jerusalem. This was the most popular feast of the year, even bigger than Passover, with joyful dancing each night in the temple courts, lit up by multiple menorah candelabra. Jews would make the pilgrimage not just from within Israel, but all across the Jewish diaspora (Acts 20:16). They would set up makeshift shelters made of branches from the local trees, in every spare corner of the city and its surrounds - even on rooftops. It celebrated God's presence with Israel in the wilderness, during the Exodus: and His provision of both water from the rock, and light at night from the cloud of Shekinah glory. During that period, God had literally "tabernacled" among them, through His Presence, filling the ‘Tent of meeting’.

An elaborate ritual had built up around the Feast over the centuries. It involved early morning trips each day by a priest, from the Temple down to the pool of Siloam, to fill up a golden jug with water. Then the priest would return through the ‘Water gate’ into the central court, where they would pour the jug into a funnel at the top of the altar as the morning sacrifice was offered. The water ran down an internal channel, onto the floor of the court, eventually finding its way into the Brook Kidron that ran below the Temple Mount. Trumpets would sound as they arrived back, and the priests would process around the altar before the outpouring. As they made the offering, the worshippers would sing the ‘Great Hallel’, a group of psalms culminating in Psalm 118 which clearly spoke of Messiah’s coming: and they would shout, ‘God be praised!’

On the last "great day" of the feast, all the ritual was ramped up: instead of three trumpet blasts, there were seven: and instead of processing around the altar once, the priests processed seven times.

The Feast of Tabernacles spoke of past, present, and future:-

• It coincided with the giving of the law on Mount Sinai, and every year the Jewish lectionary was timed so that at on the last day of Tabernacles, they would read the last chapter of Deuteronomy, followed by the first chapter of Genesis - starting a new cycle. And every seventh year, the Torah was read through from beginning to end during Tabernacles, as had happened under Ezra (Deut 31:10-13; Neh 8:13-9:3).

• Solomon’s Temple had been dedicated, and filled with shekinah glory, at Tabernacles (2Chr 5:3)

• It was timed at the end of the olive harvest, the last harvest before winter. Though Israel has the same annual rainfall as the UK, it is almost entirely during the winter months; so this festival also represented a prayer for God to send rain to nourish the crops for the following year.

• And it looked forwards to the future arrival of the messianic kingdom, when Messiah-God would dwell amongst man once again, ruling the world from Mount Zion. Nations who refused to send a delegation to worship during Tabernacles, would experience drought the following year (Zech 14:16-17).

Tabernacles being such a major crowd-puller, Jesus's siblings suggested it would be the ideal time for His following to be reminded of His miraculous powers. They couldn't understand why he was keeping such a low profile, following the threat of being forced into becoming a military Messiah, which had happened when he fed the five thousand. And presumably they were unaware of the plot to kill him in Jerusalem. Maybe they were hoping that some of His glory would be reflected onto them too: but there was an element of scepticism in their suggestion, as John records that they did not truly believe in him.

Jesus explains to them that His challenging of sin has made Him 'persona non grata', unlike them.  Whilst we are told not to judge others, we do  need to confront sin when it's an issue on which God has already declared judgement.  Any true presentation of the gospel will bring opposition and hatred from some, as well as acceptance and repentance from others.  The gospel causes division, as we see happening amongst Jesus's hearers.

His brothers are totally unaware of God’s agenda and scheduling. They don’t listen to His word, don’t recognise it when it comes, and can’t perceive the Word Incarnate standing in front of them! They know nothing of God’s divine appointments, and so any time will do. But all appointments that ignore God’s kairos timing are equally meaningless in the eternal scheme of things.

Jesus turns down their proposal, on the grounds, that "His time has not yet come". In John’s gospel, this phrase always refers to His impending crucifixion. Jesus had a clear and strong sense of Gods timing for every event in His life. They could do whatever they wanted, whenever they chose: but He was constrained to stick exactly to his Father’s schedule. This was part of His perfect obedience, but also meant He was protected from untimely arrest (7:30). We see it repeatedly throughout the gospel, particularly as He nears the Cross (12:7,23,31,36; 13:27,33 etc).

Q. How conscious are you, of God’s ‘divine appointments’ in your life?

His brothers would have taken the traditional route across the Jordan and down through Trans-Jordan, then back across the river and up to Jerusalem. This was to avoid going through Samaria, where one could expect an inhospitable response from the Samaritans.

Once they had left, Jesus too set off - but incognito. The Judaean authorities were expecting Him to come, remembering His ‘sabbath-breaking’ instruction to the man at Bethesda, and ready to arrest Him on sight. They put the word out amongst the crowds, that if anyone spotted Him, they were to report it.    Jesus’s reputation had spread far and wide, but public opinion was divided as to whether He was a good man or a charlatan (v12).  Maybe the Pharisees had been putting out 'fake news' to blacken His name; or maybe it was because He'd refused to become the military Messiah they'd expected.

There was lots of talk about Him, but ‘sotto voce’ - because the authorities had decreed that anyone confessing Him as Christ would be banned not only from the Temple ceremonies, but even from the synagogues in their home towns (9:22). Interestingly, John seems to make a distinction between the pilgrims (the people, v12) and the local Jerusalemites (v25): it seems that the pilgrims, unlike the locals, are unaware that the authorities have put a price on his head (v20,25).

Halfway through the week of the Feast, Jesus went into the Temple and began teaching.

The Jewish elite were astonished, not just by His bold-faced ignoring of their threats, but by His knowledge of the scriptures. The rabbis categorised people into spiritual grades depending on whether they had learnt the Torah as a child, studied the Mishna (the rabbis' traditions or ‘Oral Law’) as a teenager, or gone on to be discipled by a rabbi. They labelled the grades as follows:-

• Torah ✔️, Mishna ✔️, Student of the Learned X = ‘people of the land’

• Torah ✔️, Mishna X, Student of the Learned X = ‘uneducated man’

• Torah X, Mishna X, Student of the Learned X = reckoned as an animal!

In their view, Jesus was uneducated, since He had joined His father in the carpentry trade just after His Bar-Mitzvah. Maybe they had forgotten His astonishing giftedness even at the age of twelve (Lk 2:41-47).

Authority, they believed, was passed down from rabbi to rabbi through the generations; and a rabbi’s standing depended on who he had been discipled by (Acts 22:3). And yet, here He was, teaching with an authority everyone recognised as surpassing theirs (Matt 7:29), and challenging their monopoly of power.

Though there’s no mention of them actually asking Jesus about this, He replied (v16): as always, He knew what was in mens’ hearts. His authority He said, came direct from the fountainhead of God Himself. So it could not be corroborated in the usual way. Only those truly desiring to do God’s will, who had truly surrendered all personal pride of reputation, would know whether He was making up His teaching Himself, or whether it did indeed come direct from God. Those seeking their own glory, even by gaining a reputation as a great rabbi, were tainted by unrighteousness; whereas someone completely committed to God’s glory would always be true, would always speak spiritual reality.

This shows us how to test who we listen to, as Christians.  Are they seeking to impress, and build their own empire?  Or are they humbly glorifying Christ, as John the Baptist did (3:30)?  Is their teaching based on human wisdom and intellect, or does it come from reverent fear of the Lord? (Prov 1:7; 9:10)

Though Jesus had had no secondary education in Jewish eyes, His heart's desire was always to please the Father.   And people recognised that His teaching was true, because of this.  In the same way, if our teaching is focussed on Him and not on ourselves, people will recognise it as truth.

Having been challenged, Jesus challenges them back. He refers to the controversy caused by  His healing of the man at  Bethesda, eighteen months previously.   The logic of His argument is perhaps easiest conveyed by paraphrasing it:-

“You've been accusing me of breaking the law of Moses, by telling a man to pick up his mat and carry it on the sabbath. You felt this was enough to justify killing me without trial, even though this is murder under the Torah. That doesn’t speak well of your respect for the Law! All this fuss about one miracle I did, healing that man who’d been paralysed for thirty-eight years. And yet you regularly circumcise children on the eighth day, even if that falls on a sabbath.

“The only reason Moses spoke about circumcision at all, when it had been in force ever since Abraham, was so that you would know it was OK to do something good for someone even on the sabbath. His regulations about the sabbath are not meant to prevent you obeying what God had already decreed. If it’s OK to circumcise a small part of a man’s anatomy, how much more is it OK for Me to completely heal someone’s whole body on the sabbath?”

Moses in fact only spoke once, very briefly, about circumcision (Lev 12:1-3). God had instituted circumcision on the eighth day as a sign of His covenant with Abraham (Gen 17), long before the sabbath was instituted by Moses. Jewish teachers in Jesus’s time recognised that an earlier commandment took precedence over a later one, and that this specifically applied in the case of circumcision. So their judgement of Him was superficial, judging by appearances rather than according to righteousness (v24).

The crowd of pilgrims, unaware of the authorities’ intention to kill Jesus, thought he had become paranoid (v20) as a result of being demonised. But the locals, who knew what was really afoot, were puzzled by the fact that Jesus was able to preach in the Temple at all (v25,26). They reasoned that perhaps the Sanhedrin had secretly concluded that He really was the Messiah. But against this, they thought, was the fact that Jesus’s origins were known - whereas Messiah would suddenly appear out of total obscurity.  Though they knew that Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (8:42), they thought He would suddenly burst into the public consciousness later in his life.  This may have been based on Malachi's prophecy, "The Lord whom you seek, will suddenly come to His Temple" (Mal 3:1).

Jesus, fully aware of what was being rumoured, addresses the Jerusalemites directly from His soapbox in the Temple: and He uses their thinking to teach them about His incarnation! Again, it's perhaps easiest to convey the logic of his argument by paraphrasing:

“Yes, you know me, and you think you know where I'm from, namely Nazareth. But again, you are judging by superficial appearances. I was born to Mary and Joseph, but actually I was sent by the true and living God, the Ultimate Reality of the Universe. You don't know Him, but I do: because actually, I came from Him, and He sent me.”

Jesus says that whilst He came of His own free will, He was sent by God. John records Him saying this many many times. Jesus’s mission is actually God’s initiative. God so loved the world, that He sent His eternally-begotten Son, the Son who had been in His bosom for all eternity, His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased - so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. This is our God, who is love.

This claim to deity was enough to confirm to the listeners that really they should turn Him in to the Temple authorities: but because He was working in lockstep with God’s timing, no-one had the guts to actually lay hands on Him. Even the Temple guards who had been specifically told to seize Him, did nothing. Maybe like the guards in Gethsemane, they expected God to strike Him dead for His blasphemy? Or maybe they fear a riot, because they know that many of the crowd are in fact convinced that He is Messiah, because of all the miracles He had done (2:23).

Jesus’s words are gradually bringing each hearer to a crisis of belief. Each person must make their own judgement and come to their own decision: is He for real? Is He truly the Messiah, the Son of God? Their eternal destiny hangs on this one choice.

FORCING THE ISSUE: JESUS CLAIMS TO TRANSCEND THE MEANING OF THE FEAST

The Feast is drawing to its conclusion, and after a final night of celebration, the Great Day has arrived. As dawn breaks, the priest draws the water at Siloam, returns through the ‘water gate’ to the blaring of trumpets, and processes round the altar - seven times! He climbs the altar ramp and pours it out as the morning burnt offering is being lit. The worshippers are chanting, reaching a glorious climax in the Great Hallel - and then, there is a reverent silence.

Suddenly, a lone voice cries out amongst the congregation, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me; and let him drink, if he believes in Me. For as the scripture has said, ‘Out of His belly shall flow rivers of living water’.”

Water is essential for life - three days is the most a person can survive without it. Part of the meaning of Tabernacles was as a prayer to God for the autumn rains to arrive. In Israel at that time, there were no water mains or taps. But there were huge cisterns carved out of the rock (in places like Masada), which could hold enough water to see you through a long siege. The only problem was if they leaked, or if somehow they became polluted. Then you’d have to wait till the next winter to refill them. Alternatively there were wells, sometimes very deep like Jacob’s well, but which could provide a reasonably reliable source for limited volumes. Best of all however, were the high-volume springs from underground rivers in the limestone: so-called ‘living waters’. They burst forth from the belly of the rock, just like the water supply during the Exodus (Ex 17:1-7)

[There is much debate about exactly how to read the Greek of verses 37 & 38. The traditional interpretation is that the ‘he who believes in Me’ connects with the ‘out of his belly’ clause. But more recent interpreters have read it as a couplet (as above) followed by a statement which may have been Jesus’s words, or may be part of John’s interpretative comment. If one reads it as I have shown above, then a second issue arises: is the scripture referring to living water flowing from Jesus, or from the believer? In one sense you could argue that it’s a moot point. But there are no other scriptures referring to the Spirit flowing from a believer, whereas there are a lot which talk of living water flowing from Messiah. The Jews believed that the rock which Moses had struck to bring forth water in the desert, was in fact Messiah (1Cor 10:1-4). And Isaiah had prophesied, ‘With joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation’ (Isa 12:3). Ezekiel foresaw a new Temple which gushed out a life-giving river (Elk 47:1-12). And Zechariah had spoken of living waters flowing both east and west from Jerusalem, in the days of Messiah (Zech 14:8,9).]

Setting aside the academic arguments, can you imagine the impact this would have had? Again, Jesus was forcing a decision. He longs for Jerusalem to recognise its Messiah, and be saved from destruction (Matt 23:37-39; Lk 19:41-44).

Is this man ‘The Prophet’ Moses spoke of, whom we should all obey? Is He the Messiah?. Again, there are some for whom logic precludes this conclusion. Micah had predicted that Messiah would be born of David’s line, in Bethlehem (Mic 5:2). And perhaps because Jesus’s birth took place during the social upheaval of a Roman census, and was followed by a period in hiding in Egypt, they don’t seem to have known that this was true of Jesus. Again, some wanted to arrest Him; but again, no-one did (v44).

The Temple guards return empty-handed and overawed to their bosses (the High Priests) and the Pharisees. The latter are particularly incensed by their failure to arrest Jesus. They give them a dressing-down, ridiculing them for being fooled like the common people are. Again, they display their arrogance and pride, saying that the top people have unanimously decided He’s a conman.

But one lone voice refuses to be counted in. Nicodemus, ‘the Teacher of the Jews’, whose integrity had driven him to risk his reputation and personally investigate by visiting Jesus at night, reminds them that it is unlawful - illegal - to convict a man without a fair trial.

Again, they resort to bluster and ridicule, even though Nicodemus is so highly respected. His family were very prominent in Jerusalem, very well known and influential. But he must be a Galilean himself, they mock, to have overlooked the fact that no prophet has arisen from Galilee!

In this, as Nicodemus probably knew, they were actually quite wrong. For Jonah had come from Gath-Hepher, a town on the border of Zebulun (2Ki 14:25; Josh 19:13). But hey, don’t let mere facts get in the way of making a point!

Chapters 7-9 of John all deal with the theme of the Jews’ reactions to Jesus’s claims. They could have been written as a manual for the early Christians, of how to witness to Jews. But for Jew or Gentile, there are still really only the same three rational conclusions. Is He:-

• Good? (But as C S Lewis points out, if He claims to be God but isn't, Jesus cannot be merely ‘a good man’ )

• Bad: a fraud?

• Mad, paranoid, demonised?

• Or God?

The mystery of His incarnation, which John sees as pivotal to true faith, is the issue.

          Is Jesus Immanuel, the Word become flesh and who 'tabernacled' among us?

Anyone who believes that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh, is of God - says John. But anyone who denies this, despite having been faced with His claims and all the evidences that back them, is driven by an AntiChrist spirit (1 Jn 4:1,2).