When Jesus Responds
Chasing Jesus • Sermon • Submitted
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· 9 viewsJesus directs our hearts to the greatest obstacle that stands in the way of our belief, ourselves. To truly believe or place our faith in Christ requires us to respond to what He says as absolute truth. True faith is seen only as our dependence for everything shifts from ourselves to Christ. This is a hard truth for us to live out. We are so ingrained to trust first in ourselves that to truly depend on someone else is so difficult, but this is what believing in Christ is centered on. He cannot be an add-on to our current situation. He must become the center of our lives.
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Man’s Response to Jesus
Man’s Response to Jesus
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.
John 7:1-
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.
However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, “Where is he?”
Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”
Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.
Jesus came as the light to the world, God teaching His people. In this teaching, Jesus challenged the authorities of the day and the motivation and hearts of the acts of the people. The Jewish faith of the day had lost its power, the support and power of God, and had been replaced by an impossible system of control and fear based around fulfilling a law that had no power to save.
As people came face to face with the truth, they responded in a manner that met the means by which Jesus had challenged them. For the teachers of the law and the authorities fo the day, they responded to Jesus with the need to rid themselves of Him. The crowds sought Jesus for what He could do to impact their daily life. The disciples followed Jesus desiring Him to be the Messiah who would usher in the new reign of Israel.
Today, our response to Jesus is formed by who we need Jesus to be in the moment. We create our own god, a god who greater than ourselves in power but submissive to our needs and desires. We mold and shape for ourselves an entity that is deeply concerned with what we want.
This is not who God is though. God is not a construct of our minds. He is God. He was, is and will always be. He is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He is the creator of all things, and it is through Him alone that the universe is held together. He is the unstoppable One. He is the One for which all creation cries out. He is the one who is worthy of all worship and praise, not because of what He has done but because of who He is. He is God.
Our response to Him should be centered on who He is, not who we want Him to be. Who is leading who?
Jesus Responds to Man
Jesus Responds to Man
Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”
Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 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. 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. Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
“You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 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. 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? Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
John: An Introduction and Commentary iii. During the Feast: Jesus Teaches in the Temple (7:14–24)
This enunciates a very important fact: recognizing the truth of Jesus’ teaching is not dependent upon intellectual ability or formal learning, nor is it a reward for the noble search for truth. It depends, rather, upon a person’s willingness to do the will of God.
While man responds to God by making God who we desire Him to be, God responds to man by allowing man to be reach the potential of who he was created to be. God designed man to have the potential to lead all the rest of creation in glorifying the Creator. Man has the capacity to do all things for the glory of the Almighty.
Since the dawn of time, God has responded to man by revealing Himself to man so that man would know Him and would clearly know his purpose. God has given to man all that is necessary for life lived to its fullest, a relationship with the Creator. As Jesus expounds on the Scriptures, He breathes to life this truth. How could He teach with such grasp of the Scriptures without having gone through the training that the teachers of the law had. Jesus responds that true knowledge comes from the giver of knowledge.
Is Jesus the smartest man in the world? Yes, He is the creator of knowledge. He is the author of all things. Apart from Him nothing has come into being, including our knowledge.
If you do the will of God then you will know God. God has responded to us by giving us Himself. As we follow Him, trust in Him, believe in Him, we receive all that we need for life. Apart from Him, there is no life, but in Him, the possible is made real.