Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / John

John 7:25-52 09/04/05

Message: ‘Conflict in the Midst of Celebration’ pt. 2                                                   Text: John 7:1-52
 

Introduction: About three dozen employees from around the country were sent to California for a training seminar on some equipment they would be using. At dinner one evening, the participants were asked to tell where they were from and what they did. A man seated in the middle table said that he worked for a chemical plant in New Jersey. “New Jersey” the facilitator echoed. “How is it that California ended up with all the lawyers and New Jersey has all the chemical waste dumps?” The man quickly replied. “New Jersey had first pick”. (Paul Decker)

We make choices everyday; some great and some small. You’ve made a number of choices already this morning.
•    You chose to wake up at a certain time.
•    You chose to get dressed and wear certain clothes.
•    You chose to go to church and travel a particular set of roads to get there.
•    You chose to come to this church to worship God together with these people.
•    And your choices for the day are far from over…
        -What will you have for lunch?
        -What will you have for dinner?
        -What will you do with the time in between?

Choices...we make choices everyday.

Transition: Turn in your Bibles to John 7:25 (Pg. 816 in the church Bible) where we will find that when the people in our text showed up at the temple to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles, they too had a choice to make. What will I do with Jesus?

4. John 7:25-44    Conflict about the Christ
Read: John 7:25-31

The people in the crowd are a bit confused. They heard the rumors that the religious leaders wanted Jesus dead. But here he was teaching like he always did and no one was there to stop him.
•    On one hand some of these people were looking for a confrontation and wanted to see Jesus dead too.
•    On the other hand there were some who saw this as perhaps a sign that Jesus was in fact the Messiah as he claimed.

The people began to talk to each other and some said even though the religious leaders aren’t dong anything about him, he can’t be the Christ, we know him and where he comes from. NO paying attention to the Scriptures, they somehow thought the Messiah would come unexpectedly and from out of nowhere.

Jesus, knowing their hearts and minds, responds with what can only can be called sarcasm when he tells them... Oh, you know me and where I come from.  I came from God and by your unbelief you don’t even know him.

This really upset them. They were Jews, they knew God, they were God’s people, his children.
•    Some in the crowd chose to grab him to have him stoned but he escaped. It wasn’t his time yet, and nothing can happen to him or you until God’s perfect timing
      has come.
•    Some in the crowd chose to believe in him because they said no one can do what he does and not be the Christ.

Choices were made. Some to reject Jesus, some to embrace him. It’s the same today. When people are confronted with the truth of Jesus, some, will choose to reject him while others will chose to run into his arms.

Read: John 7:32-36

The Pharisees, religious leaders, didn’t like the fact that their inactivity meant Jesus was getting more converts, so they dispatched troops to arrest him.  In the mean time, Jesus told the crowd ‘you will look for me but not find me and where I am going you can not go.’

•    Remember the Jews had a preoccupation with the physical over the spiritual. So the crowd was thinking geographically while Jesus was speaking spiritually.
•    The Jews were thinking that Jesus was going to another country while Jesus was talking about going to home, to heaven.

I believe there are two purposes behind what Jesus is saying here.
•    First. Jesus is talking about his death, burial, resurrection and ascension into heaven.
•    Second, the reason they can’t find him or go where he is going is because they don’t believe he is the Messiah. Only those who believe Jesus is the Son of God,
     sent to forgive their sins, will find Him and go to heaven to be with him.
       
Read: John 8:21 ‘Once more Jesus said to them ‘I am going away and you will look for me and you will die in your sin. Where I go, you cannot come.’

Jesus is saying that choosing not to believe in him will bring great conflict in your life…and in your death. The hard truth is,
    -you will not go to heaven unless your sins are forgiven,
    -your sins won’t be forgiven unless you ask Jesus to forgive them,
    -and you won’t ask Jesus to forgive your sins unless you  believe he’s your savior.

Can you see why many of the people wanted him dead? They believed they deserved Heaven because they were Jews…

Just like many today believe they deserve heaven because they live good lives…but good is never good enough… you must be perfect, and to be perfect in God’s eyes your sins have to be forgiven…you already know the rest… forgiveness comes only through faith in Jesus Christ.
    -In the midst of conflict,
    -in the midst of doubt and unbelief,
    -in the midst of complete rejection and facing the death squad,

Jesus isn’t thinking about himself, he still offers forgiveness and life to those who choose believe in him. What a wonderful Savior!

Read: John 7:37-44

Jesus goes to the Temple to speak on the most sacred day of the Feast, the day when most of the people in Jerusalem will be in the Temple. In this, the climax, the emotional high of the week long celebration, Jesus stands up and declares ‘If anyone is thirsty let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him’

Let’s break this down.
    -Thirsty…spiritually that represents a deep longing for something more, something better... it is a longing for God to fill the emptiness, the restlessness in our lives.
    -Whoever believes…whoever. Not just church people, not just really good people, not just Americans…whoever calls upon the name of the Lord..will be saved.
     Whoever is you!
    -Streams of living water…daily during this feast, the priests would pour out water on the altar symbolically representing the water than God provided from the rock
      that followed their ancestors through the desert that quenched their thirst and kept them alive.

Jesus was telling them that they could have water from him that would keep them alive spiritually, forever. If they just believed in him.
Jesus was telling them he was the rock that followed their ancestors that quenched their thirst and kept them alive.
Jesus was telling them…and us that if you are thirsty for something more in life, if you long to know God in a deeper way,  come to me and drink.

Some believed and chose to come to Jesus and their thirsting was quenched, their longing satisfied…others rejected his offer because they didn’t believe he could do what he was saying and they continued in their restlessness.

Transition: Well, the conflict in the streets, and in the temple made it’s way to the headquarters of the religious leaders.

5. John 7:45-52    Conflict Among the Religious  Leaders
Read: John 7:45-52

I love this. The temple guards, the fiercest of the cities police force, come back mesmerized, their hearts touched by the words of Jesus. And when the religious leaders ask why Jesus wasn’t with them. The soldiers replied…no one speaks like him, he makes sense of things, when he speaks it sounds so true.

The religious leaders respond by showing their arrogance and conceit.
•    They belittle the guards.
•    Then they call the Jewish people ‘a mob’ who know nothing of the law.
•    And they become members of snob hill by demeaning everyone who came from Galilee.

Note also that the religious leaders didn’t know as much about Scripture as they thought they knew when they claimed no prophet had ever come from Galilee.
•    Scholar A.T. Robertson has found that the prophets Jonah, Hosea, and Nahum were all from the region of Galilee.

It seems all but one of the religious leaders made the choice to reject Jesus.

Conclusion
ILL: Speaking about choices, Eleanor Roosevelt once said: One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words. It is expressed in the choices one makes. The process never ends until we die. And the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility. “Little House on the Freeway, Tim Kimmel, p. 143”

What have you chosen to do with Jesus?

The people at the festival took Jesus words seriously and so should we.
•    Either he is who he says he is…the Son of God who offers forgiveness for sin and eternal life in heaven and we should fall down on our knees asking for
     forgiveness
•    or he is a fraud and we should flat out reject him.

These are your only options and you will choose. You see even by not choosing or by saying you’ll think about it later, you have chosen at this moment to reject him. In this case a wait till later is still a no vote.

Why? Because you don’t know God’s timing for your life. You may walk out of these doors this morning and die on the way home or in your bed tonight…yes, it could happen to you.

While we all make numerous choices throughout our day…like what we will eat for lunch, what we will eat for dinner and what we will do with the time in between…no choice is as important as what will you choose to do with Jesus today.