Ignorant of the Law

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded. “Have you been led astray, too?” the Pharisees mocked. “Is there a single one of us rulers or Pharisees who believes in him? This foolish crowd follows him, but they are ignorant of the law. God’s curse is on them!””
John 7:45-49 NLT

The arrogance of the Pharisees, and the others who made up the religious leadership, is breath-taking. With their words they sealed their own fate and accused those in the “foolish crowd” of being ignorant of the Law even when it pointed, through prophecies, to the coming Messiah. Worse, they then cursed the people in the name of God. A very sad situation that ultimately led to Jesus’ execution at Calvary.

There are men and women today, in positions of church leadership, who claim to know better than ordinary “foolish” people. In fact, every generation since Jesus walked on this planet has had more than its fair share of people who preach a message based on their own construction rather than God’s intent. They may even use Scriptures, like the Pharisees, to justify their position. But in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul contrasted the “wise” of this world with the “foolishness” of the message of the cross and the people who are being saved by it. He wrote, “The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction! But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Paul went on to quote a verse from Isaiah 29, “As the Scriptures say, “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise and discard the intelligence of the intelligent””. And Paul, a lapsed and repentant Pharisee, then wrote, “This foolish plan of God is wiser than the wisest of human plans, and God’s weakness is stronger than the greatest of human strength. Remember, dear brothers and sisters, that few of you were wise in the world’s eyes or powerful or wealthy when God called you. Instead, God chose things the world considers foolish in order to shame those who think they are wise. And he chose things that are powerless to shame those who are powerful” (1 Corinthians 1:25-27). 

The wisdom and knowledge of the Pharisees and the other religious leaders was ultimately exposed for what it was by the ordinary people in the crowd who came to believe in Jesus. The “wise” religious leaders journeyed on to their ultimate fate. I can just imagine one of these arrogant leaders standing before God trying to explain why they refused to believe in His Son, Jesus. Perhaps they even angrily shook their fists in God’s face, accusing Him of letting them down. A quote from C S Lewis (the Great Divorce), “But, beyond all these, I saw other grotesque phantoms in which hardly a trace of the human form remained; monsters who had faced the journey to the bus stop—perhaps for them it was thousands of miles—and come up to the country of the Shadow of Life and limped far into it over the torturing grass, only to spit and gibber out in one ecstasy of hatred their envy and (what is harder to understand) their contempt, of joy”. But perhaps God will lovingly say to them that by sending His Son He was fulfilling the intention of the Law. Jesus said in Matthew 5:17, “Don’t misunderstand why I have come. I did not come to abolish the law of Moses or the writings of the prophets. No, I came to accomplish their purpose”. And then, before God, the light suddenly dawned on those arrogant men as they, too late of course, realised their error. 

Paul was a very learned man, and considered a Pharisee above all others, but he wrote in Philippians 3:7-9, “I once thought these things were valuable, but now I consider them worthless because of what Christ has done. Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him. I no longer count on my own righteousness through obeying the law; rather, I become righteous through faith in Christ. For God’s way of making us right with himself depends on faith”. 

We pilgrims believe in Jesus. We have faith in Him and His words of eternal life. The message of the cross has led us astray, away from the “wisdom” of the world into the Kingdom of God. There is no better place to be.

Dear Father God. The message of the Cross is fundamental to our faith in Jesus, and we are eternally grateful for Your plan for the salvation of mankind. Amen.

No Arrest

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Some even wanted him arrested, but no one laid a hand on him. When the Temple guards returned without having arrested Jesus, the leading priests and Pharisees demanded, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” “We have never heard anyone speak like this!” the guards responded.”
John 7:44-46 NLT

The Temple guards had a dilemma. They had been sent to arrest Jesus, but they had no legal mandate to do so, other than the instructions of the religious leaders. But in Jesus’ presence they were overcome by His gracious and life-giving words, in some way touched by God. I picture a group of the senior clerics, the leading priests and the Pharisees, meeting together, and deciding to send the guards to arrest Jesus. So, the guards were called in and given their instructions. Off they went and found Jesus in the Temple teaching the people. He wouldn’t have been hard to find, because of the crowd who were probably standing there silently and listening to what Jesus had to say. In other places in the Gospels we read about how Jesus spoke with an authority they had never experienced from their own teachers. But the guards paused for a few moments, taking in the scene and starting to listen to Jesus as well. Mesmerised, they forgot their mission, and when the session came to a natural end, they returned to the meeting of clerics without Jesus. I wonder why they returned, but I suppose they had to report back to their employers. I also wonder what story they started to form in their minds to excuse their lack of action? But in reply to the question, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” they replied,  “We have never heard anyone speak like this!”.

In the Temple, Jesus was communicating God’s message to His people. This was a brave thing to do because the religious leaders claimed that right for themselves, but early on in His mission, Jesus came up against the traditional religious environment of His day. His message was forgiveness and life, much more attractive than the Pharisaical message of laws and rules. He performed miracles and signs, and gave the glory to God, who subsequently touched those Temple guards with a message of hope and a future with Him. More than anyone else, those guards would have been well aware of the hypocrisy in the religious lives of their leaders, so it is no wonder that they were refreshed by an encounter with Jesus.

We pilgrims can have such an encounter with our Lord and Saviour at any time, through the power of the Holy Spirit within us. But we too must beware of becoming fixed and hypocritical in our faith. We worship the living God, who has made available to us the “living water” Jesus offered to the temple crowd that day at the end of the Feast of Tabernacles. We drink at every opportunity, so that the water of life will flow around us and touch all the sceptics in the “crowd”, with God’s gracious words of forgiveness and life.

Dear Heavenly Father. We thank You for the water of life that perpetually pours from Your throne in rivers of blessing. We praise You today. Amen.

Prophet or Messiah

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“When the crowds heard him say this, some of them declared, “Surely this man is the Prophet we’ve been expecting.” Others said, “He is the Messiah.” Still others said, “But he can’t be! Will the Messiah come from Galilee? For the Scriptures clearly state that the Messiah will be born of the royal line of David, in Bethlehem, the village where King David was born.” So the crowd was divided about him. Some even wanted him arrested, but no one laid a hand on him.”
John 7:40-44 NLT

There were obviously some people in the crowd who knew their Bibles. The reference to the “Prophet” came from verses in Deuteronomy 18, “Moses continued, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your fellow Israelites. You must listen to him. … I will raise up a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites. I will put my words in his mouth, and he will tell the people everything I command him” (Deuteronomy 18:15,18). And the prophecy about the “Messiah” came from Micah 5:2, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf”. Still others didn’t rate Jesus at all, presumably considering Him to be a fraud, so they wanted to arrest Him. It was not a time in history when you would want to make claims of divinity, it seems.

But the three-way schism in the crowd that had gathered in the Temple came to nothing, because “no one laid a hand on Him”. Jesus’ presence, and His teaching and miracles, started many people off on a spiritual journey by confronting their beliefs and behaviours. If Jesus was in fact the Prophet or Messiah, then what should they do? But their religious leaders had publicly rejected Jesus because He didn’t pander to their religiosity and because He didn’t behave in the way they, the religious leaders, expected. They were perhaps expecting a Jesus such as we read about in Revelation, coming on a white horse at the head of an army, ready to do battle with the forces of evil. So the people were indeed left, as Jesus said later, like sheep without a shepherd. 

Perhaps the question for today is what do we think about Jesus? At His first coming was He the Prophet or the Messiah, foretold by the ancient prophets? We pilgrims have the benefit of hindsight, and know the truth. Jesus came as the Son of God, fulfilling the Old Testament prophecies, and offering Himself as the Saviour of everyone who believes in Him. Most people in our Western societies today will have very different views, even if they have any views about Jesus at all. But there has never been anyone born in this world who has impacted history as much as Jesus did. 

In the Temple that day, the people were not aware of the importance of the occasion. They knew Someone significant was before them but that was probably as far as it went for most of them. But there would have been a few people that God had called who listened to Jesus and then went away changed by an encounter with Him. People who desired more than anything else the “living water” that Jesus was offering. These were people who became the bedrock of the early church, and to whom we should be grateful. In the generations since, there have been a significant minority of people who have heard God’s call and who have followed Him, often in difficult and life-threatening circumstances. One day we will all meet up, and be with our Saviour for ever, rewarded for our faith and belief in Him.

Dear God. Thank You for Your Holy Spirit, so available to all who ask. We thank You for refilling us every day, and for keeping us close to You. Amen.

“Search for Me”

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“But Jesus told them, “I will be with you only a little longer. Then I will return to the one who sent me. You will search for me but not find me. And you cannot go where I am going.” The Jewish leaders were puzzled by this statement. “Where is he planning to go?” they asked. “Is he thinking of leaving the country and going to the Jews in other lands? Maybe he will even teach the Greeks! What does he mean when he says, ‘You will search for me but not find me,’ and ‘You cannot go where I am going’?””
John 7:33-36 NLT

The Jewish leaders were perplexed because of the two statements made by Jesus. In their attempt to arrest Him, they were stopped in their tracks. “You will search for me but not find me” had just been said by a man who claimed to be the Son of God. If His claim about Himself was correct, they reasoned, why will He disappear and go somewhere they can’t? They rationalised their dilemma by suggesting that Jesus might be planning to leave Jerusalem and going to another land where the Jews or even a people they despised, such as the Greeks, lived. But then perhaps a niggly thought started to build in their minds. The prophet Jeremiah had written, “And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). If Jesus was in fact divine, as He claimed, then they would be able to search for Him and find Him. But if they refuted His claim then they were in danger of missing out on the promise penned by the prophet. 

Once again, Jesus was speaking about spiritual matters. Those who rejected Him and His teaching about the Kingdom of God had chosen a path that would fail to lead to eternal life with God. They would instead experience God’s judgement and an uncertain future beyond the grave. It took the Jewish people of His time much courage to be able to believe in Jesus, because His radical teaching, though building on much of the Jewish traditional theology, took a different course and re-established the importance of gaining a relationship with God. Such a message had always been there in the Hebrew Bible but had become eclipsed by a form of religion that majored on following rules and regulations rather than the One who brought them in the first place. In the same way it took much arrogance from the Jewish leaders to reject Jesus and His teaching, instead stating that Jesus was a fraud and should be killed to avoid Him polluting the people with a teaching that they did not approve of. 

So, Jesus quite rightly told the Jewish leaders that He was going somewhere – in fact, as we know, returning to His Heavenly home – a place that would not be available to the Jewish leaders because they had rejected the Messenger, the Son of God, sent by the very God they claimed to worship. There is no place in Heaven for anyone who has rejected Jesus. But we fast forward to 21st Century Planet Earth and find the same attitudes still prevalent today. Of course, Jesus does not stand before us in the flesh, but His message is still alive and well. His counter-cultural teachings about the Kingdom of God and the importance of repentance of sins and receiving God’s forgiveness still stand. And the words of Jesus still divide humanity into two camps – those who believe in Him and those who don’t. We pilgrims are assured of our salvation because we have embraced Jesus with all of our hearts, and we try our best to persuade others to make the right choice.

Dear Lord Jesus. Only You have the words of eternal life. Please help us to hear them clearly so that we can share them with others. In Your precious Name we pray. Amen. 

Jesus, the Sent One

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“While Jesus was teaching in the Temple, he called out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I come from. But I’m not here on my own. The one who sent me is true, and you don’t know him. But I know him because I come from him, and he sent me to you.” Then the leaders tried to arrest him; but no one laid a hand on him, because his time had not yet come.”
John 7:28-30 NLT

Jesus didn’t just appear in this world as part of the normal reproduction of human beings. He was born in humble circumstances as a male baby, the first-born of a Jewish peasant girl. He went through all the stages of growing up as a boy did in those days. However, when He reached the age of twelve, He knew His mission in life. He stayed behind in the Temple one Passover and His parents found Him there. We read in Luke 2:49, ““But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”” A reminder perhaps to His parents of that fateful day when Mary had a visit from an angel. We read in Luke 1:35, “The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God”. Jesus was born as a baby with Mary’s and God’s DNA. He was both human and divine. 

So, Jesus informed the crowd around Him at the Temple that, although they knew most of His humble origins, He had in fact been sent by His Father in Heaven. This statement of truth, however, was lost on the religious leaders who instead wanted to eliminate Him. After all, they couldn’t have someone claiming to be God’s Son around them, because if they believed Him, the consequence would be that there would be a tremendous upheaval to the political and religious life in Israel. We then have the intriguing statement that the leaders “tried to arrest Him”, but failed. The problem to them was that they were afraid of the crowd around Jesus – any attempt to arrest Him might cause unrest and threaten their authority. They needed to get Him on His own somewhere so that they could carry out their dark deeds. But there is perhaps a hint that Jesus’ Father in Heaven might have sent a few angels to protect Him, because John wrote, “His time had not yet come”. There would come a day when Jesus would be arrested but this wasn’t that time.

Jesus had been sent from God. It wasn’t a sudden appearance – that would happen at His Second Coming – but the first time round, Jesus had to come as a human being because in that way He would act as the bridge between God and mankind. We have a sinless, human and divine Saviour, who in spite of all the opposition, left us with a timeless message of love and hope, a message finally coming to fruition on a cross at Calvary. 

Dear Lord Jesus. Thank You for coming to this world in the way You did. Through Your sacrifice at Calvary we now have a way back to God, forgiven of our sins. Amen.

When the Messiah Comes

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Some of the people who lived in Jerusalem started to ask each other, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? But here he is, speaking in public, and they say nothing to him. Could our leaders possibly believe that he is the Messiah? But how could he be? For we know where this man comes from. When the Messiah comes, he will simply appear; no one will know where he comes from.””
John 7:25-27 NLT

So the animosity between the Jewish leaders and Jesus was obviously public knowledge. Everyone seemed to know about Jesus, and He split public opinion into two people factions – those that supported Him and those that didn’t. Jesus’ message and His claim to be the Son of God was clear, so clear in fact, that people started to ask the question if He really was the Messiah they had been expecting. But they had a problem with Jesus’ pedigree. If they had bothered to do some research they would have found that the prophecies about the coming of the Messiah fitted exactly with Jesus’ origins. As we know, Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, fulfilling the prophecy in Micah 5:2, “But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel, whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf”. The Jewish leaders at the time of Jesus’ birth knew that, and Herod was convinced enough by the prophecy to murder many innocent male babies in and around Bethlehem. The people assumed that He was born and bred in Nazareth, a village located in Galilee, because that was where He grew up and worked.

Another misconception the people held was that the Messiah would just “simply appear”. It is sometimes strange how ideas and rumours quickly grow into becoming facts, even though there is no basis for them. Jesus made it clear that He was and is the Messiah. John 4:25-26, “The woman said, “I know the Messiah is coming—the one who is called Christ. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus told her, “I Am the Messiah!”” But the problem for the people was that Jesus didn’t fit their preconceived notions of the Messiah they were expecting. They were expecting a King and the wise men from the east came looking for Him – Matthew 2:1-2, “Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem, asking, “Where is the newborn king of the Jews? We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him.”“ The Jewish people expected the Messiah to usher in an immediate kingdom that would re-establish the Jewish state, independent once again. Luke 19:11, “The crowd was listening to everything Jesus said. And because he was nearing Jerusalem, he told them a story to correct the impression that the Kingdom of God would begin right away“. But it was sad that the Jewish leaders and people selected the prophecies that they agreed with, and discarded those, such as the Suffering Servant in Isaiah, that didn’t fit their expectations.

I wonder how many of the Jewish people expected Jesus to establish a spiritual, not physical, Kingdom? His Kingdom was not of this world, Jesus said in John 18:36, and it was so sad that the Jews continued to search for their Messiah when He was walking amongst them. But we pilgrims have the benefit of hindsight, and we know that the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, indeed came to “seek and save the lost”. After all, we are amongst those for whom He came, and we look forward when His Kingdom is finally established, for all eternity. We have rewritten the phrase “When the Messiah comes” into “We know the Messiah has come”, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, He is still with us today.

Dear Lord Jesus. You are the Messiah, the Christ who came to save us from our sins. We worship You today. Amen.

The Law of Moses

Posted on by Adrian Clark

““Moses gave you the law, but none of you obeys it! In fact, you are trying to kill me.” The crowd replied, “You’re demon possessed! Who’s trying to kill you?” Jesus replied, “I did one miracle on the Sabbath, and you were amazed. But you work on the Sabbath, too, when you obey Moses’ law of circumcision. (Actually, this tradition of circumcision began with the patriarchs, long before the law of Moses.) For if the correct time for circumcising your son falls on the Sabbath, you go ahead and do it so as not to break the law of Moses. So why should you be angry with me for healing a man on the Sabbath? Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly.””
John 7:19-24 NLT

In Exodus 20:8-11 is recorded the words God said to Moses about working on the Sabbath. We read, “Remember to observe the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. You have six days each week for your ordinary work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath day of rest dedicated to the Lord your God. On that day no one in your household may do any work. This includes you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, your livestock, and any foreigners living among you. For in six days the Lord made the heavens, the earth, the sea, and everything in them; but on the seventh day he rested. That is why the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and set it apart as holy”. But the Rabbis developed from this Law a raft of rules, regulations and exclusions watering down the intent of God, which was to supply His creation with a holy day of rest. The Jewish leaders had harassed Jesus for doing what they defined as work on the Sabbath day – He healed a man of an ailment that had kept him paralysed for thirty eight years. Worse, He had then told that man to lift up his bed and carry it away. But Jesus easily exposed their hypocrisy by pointing out the Rabbi’s rules on circumcision, an act that they carried out on the eighth day after the birth of a male child, even if it had to take place on the Sabbath. Jesus wasn’t saying that this was wrong. He said, “Look beneath the surface so you can judge correctly”. In Mark 2:27-28 we read what Jesus said about another apparent contravention of the Sabbath rules, “Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord, even over the Sabbath!””

Human beings love to put in place laws, rules and regulations to govern behaviour. So we have recently seen in Scotland the introduction of a hate crime law, which tries to define what people should and shouldn’t do when it comes to their attitudes and actions towards their fellow members of society. In the church there is a similar approach with the introduction and application of liturgies, which define what members of that particular denomination should believe and how they apply it. But Jesus said in response to a question from a Jewish lawyer something that is the key to Godly human behaviour. Jesus was asked what the most important commandment was and He replied, “ … ‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments” (Matthew 22:37-40). 

Jesus on many occasions pointed out the hypocrisy and flaws in a religious system that replaced a relationship with God and each other with a set of rules that then became the responsibility of the Jewish leaders to police. In the process the leaders replaced freedom with legalism.

I love what the psalmist David wrote about the law in Psalm 19:7-11, “The instructions of the Lord are perfect, reviving the soul. The decrees of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The commandments of the Lord are right, bringing joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are clear, giving insight for living. Reverence for the Lord is pure, lasting forever. The laws of the Lord are true; each one is fair. They are more desirable than gold, even the finest gold. They are sweeter than honey, even honey dripping from the comb. They are a warning to your servant, a great reward for those who obey them“. Unfortunately, by the time the Jewish leaders of Jesus’ day got involved, the “joy to the heart” was replaced by a legalistic drudgery with little in the way of a relationship with God. The people followed the Law because the religious leaders said so, and because to do anything else was to invite punishment of one sort or another.

Jesus told the Jewish leaders that their hypocrisy and legalistic contradictions need to be sorted before they pointed a finger at Him.

Father God. You provided the Law so that Your people would know the right and true way. Please help us to listen carefully to all Your gracious and loving words so that we too can follow You faithfully and enjoy a relationship with You that lasts for all eternity. Amen.

The Message from God

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“So Jesus told them, “My message is not my own; it comes from God who sent me. Anyone who wants to do the will of God will know whether my teaching is from God or is merely my own. Those who speak for themselves want glory only for themselves, but a person who seeks to honour the one who sent him speaks truth, not lies.”
John 7:16-18 NLT

Late one night a man, a Jewish leader, called Nicodemus paid a secret visit to Jesus, and we can read John’s account of the conversation between them in John 3. But we are all aware of the verse that succinctly states the message that underpinned Jesus’ ministry and teaching for the few short years He was here in earth. John 3:16-17, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him”. And in Luke 19:10, following the conversion of Zacchaeus, we read, “For the Son of Man came to seek and save those who are lost.” Of course, we should also read John 14:6, “Jesus told him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the Father except through me””. There is an essential element in the response to Jesus’ teaching and that is that we must believe in Him. This isn’t a detached, uninvolved belief, that has no impact on our daily sinful lives, but one in which we respond to in repentance, turning belief into the actions required by His teaching. 

Jesus told His listeners in the Temple in Jerusalem that He wasn’t preaching a message of His own making. He was communicating something that had come directly from God Himself, and this message will only be valid for those who genuinely want to do the “will of God”. So Jesus wasn’t interested in getting the glory for all the teaching and miracles he performed. In it all He looked up and pointed to His Father in Heaven, telling the crowd to do the same. Jesus continually honoured His Father in Heaven, and taught others to do likewise. The prayer He taught His disciples starts with the phrase, “Hallowed be Your Name”. Before anything else we look to God and give him all the glory, all the thanks, all the honour, and all everything else, because he and He alone is our God. 

There is much more that can be said about God’s message. It started with the love of a Father who sent His Son to die on a Roman cross at a place called Calvary, so that through Him we believe that he paid the penalty that our sins deserved – death – and instead gave us His righteousness. What a Saviour! What a God! What a Message! 

Father God. What can we do other than bow at Your feet in gratitude and worship. Amen.

Trained by God

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“Then, midway through the festival, Jesus went up to the Temple and began to teach. The people were surprised when they heard him. “How does he know so much when he hasn’t been trained?” they asked. So Jesus told them, “My message is not my own; it comes from God who sent me.””
John 7:14-16 NLT

There came the day when Jesus finally appeared in the Temple, and John recorded that He “began to teach”. As a reminder, Jesus appeared publicly half way through the Feast of Tabernacles, which was a week long festival of thanksgiving to God, for the harvest just completed and the feeding of the Israelite slaves in the wilderness so many years before. It was an essential event for the Jews, particularly the male contingent, so Jerusalem would have been mobbed by huge crowds. John also recorded that the “people were surprised when they heard Him” because of His lack of training. 

What was there about Jesus’ teaching that made the people think that way? There were probably several reasons. Perhaps His style of presentation was different to what the people were used to. His teaching material, though Scripturally based, would have had a different interpretation to that of the conventional text books. The miraculous signs he used to support His message would have wowed the crowd but, again, suggest to them that He had not been trained in the traditional Jewish ways. Jesus was honest and said it as it was. He made no attempt to woo the crowd with benign platitudes and a false praise. He regularly attacked the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders, even on one occasion saying that their father was not God but the devil. When they tried to trap Him with difficult questions, He confounded and silenced them. Jesus told the crowd that, like it or not, His message “is not [His] own; it comes from God who sent [Him]”.

Most church ministers, as we pilgrims know, are trained in some theological college or other. The people who are training for the ministry become acquainted with the culture and teaching of their particular denomination, learning the liturgies and Biblical interpretations. But there is a better way through the Holy Spirit who lives within us. Jesus told His disciples that He will lead us into all truth – ”When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. He will not speak on his own but will tell you what he has heard. He will tell you about the future” (John 16:13). That’s all Jesus did. He told the people what His Father in Heaven told Him to say. We pilgrims have a duty to consult with God over what we should do and say. His Words may or may not agree with the teaching of our denominations but by being soundly Bible based then they will be truth. The words Jesus said cut across cultural sensitivities to declare and teach the truth after generations of misinterpretations or even untruths supposedly based on the Hebrew Bible. The truths we declare will increasingly impact the cultures in which we live, because they expose sin and evil, never a popular subject in a society without a relationship with God.

We pilgrims had embraced the Gospel, repented of our sins, and believe in Jesus 100%. We speak as God directs. There is no other way.

Dear Father God. We reach out to You today, trusting in You to lead and guide us through the minefields of life. Only You have the words of eternal life. Thank You. Amen.

The Grumbling Crowds

Posted on by Adrian Clark

“But after his brothers left for the festival, Jesus also went, though secretly, staying out of public view. The Jewish leaders tried to find him at the festival and kept asking if anyone had seen him. There was a lot of grumbling about him among the crowds. Some argued, “He’s a good man,” but others said, “He’s nothing but a fraud who deceives the people.” But no one had the courage to speak favourably about him in public, for they were afraid of getting in trouble with the Jewish leaders.”
John 7:10-13 NLT

If nothing else, Jesus had managed to get the crowds at the Feast of Tabernacles talking about Him. Some said he was a good Man. Others said He was a fraud. But there was a lot of grumbling going on. And to cap it all, the Jewish leaders saw Jesus as a threat to their authority and the comfortable life they had as the de facto government of Israel. Were they heading up a totalitarian state, much as we find in places like Iran, with religious leaders dictating rights and wrongs, supported by a force of “heavies” to make sure the people stayed in line? Possibly, but with Jesus on the scene, unpredictable, claiming to be the Son of God, teaching a different message to the people and supported by miraculous signs, they felt they had no option other than to close Him down, by whatever method was possible and expedient. So there were those in the crowds who supported Jesus, happy to accept Him for who he was, but they probably kept their heads down for fear of “getting into trouble with the Jewish leaders”. 

So the opposing factions present in the crowds created a febrile atmosphere of argument and grumbling. Such a situation happens today, not in physical crowds but in cyberspace, with social media becoming the battleground for opposing points of view. In our democratic systems of government, there is little the leaders can do to shut down the grumblers, although they try, with legislation in place to suppress the worst excesses, but with “free speech” being maintained, for now. In Jesus’ day the crowds were located in and around Jerusalem, but today, the “crowd” is global in its extent. 

But the Bible is clear – grumbling is a sin and can show unbelief towards God. The Apostle James wrote, “What is causing the quarrels and fights among you? Don’t they come from the evil desires at war within you? You want what you don’t have, so you scheme and kill to get it. You are jealous of what others have, but you can’t get it, so you fight and wage war to take it away from them. Yet you don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure” (James 4:1-3). These verses from James aptly describe the “culture wars” so prevalent in today’s societies. One group of adherents to a particular ideology take an aggressive stand against another equally aggressive group, each trying to close down the other. So they quarrel and fight, incessantly grumbling, confused and ignorant – Godless people with wrong motives. It never happens amongst Christians, does it? Hmmm…

Paul wrote in Philippians 2:14-15, “Do everything without complaining and arguing, so that no one can criticise you. Live clean, innocent lives as children of God, shining like bright lights in a world full of crooked and perverse people”. Jesus came with a mission and ministry to seek and save the lost. In the process of this, He counter-culturally challenged the status quo and wherever he went he left a trail of grumblers, particularly amongst the Jewish hierarchy. But the world has never been the same since His first coming. God’s plan for mankind’s salvation was successful and ever since Jesus walked the paths in the Middle East countless people have repented of their sins and believed in Him. And we pilgrims are demonstrations of the fruits of Jesus’ ministry. What a Saviour!

Dear Father God. Thank You for Your plan of salvation and showing us the way to eternal life with You. Our gratitude will last forever. Amen.