Going with Jesus - John 7:32-36

It’s been several weeks since we’ve been in the book of John and today, we’re simply picking up right where we left off. Last time we were in John, we looked at verses 7:25-31, and in chapter 7, Jesus is at the Temple teaching during the Feast of Booths. And while he was teaching in the temple, a crowd forms, and he has an exchange with the Jewish religious leaders.

Sort of the climax of John 7:25-31 was when Jesus openly accused the Jewish leaders of wanting to kill him. Of course, they denied his accusation, but the spectators among the crowd seemed to agree with Jesus! They, too, thought the Pharisees wanted to murder Jesus.

In fact, the spectators said amongst themselves, in verses 25 and 26, “ “Is not this the man whom they seek to kill? 26 And here he is, speaking openly, and they say nothing to him!”

So Jesus is staring down his enemies, accusing them directly of wanting to kill him, and the Pharisees take it. Which is extremely odd when you consider how much they hated Jesus.

So the last time we were in John together, we got a glimpse at the crowd and their response to Jesus’ interaction with the Jewish religious leaders. This week, we’re continuing that interaction, only now, we’re going to see how the Pharisees respond.

But at this point, they’ve had enough. They’re jumping into action. They’re sending for officers to arrest Jesus. They’re finally doing something about him. But probably one of the most striking things about this passage is how long it took them to do something. They really seem to tolerate Jesus even though it’s clear to Jesus and the crowd that they hate him.

Don’t we all put up with things that we say we don’t like? Not that long ago, I was speaking with someone that had lost a lot of weight. He looked great.

And I asked him, what did you do? What’s your secret? And he proceeded to tell me a hilarious story. Apparently, he was a night eater, which is the worst kind of eating from what I understand, and one particular night, he woke up in the middle of the night, made his way to the kitchen, pulled out a carton of ice cream, and started eating it. But on that particular night, he snapped! He was absolutely disgusted with himself, and he took a full carton of ice cream and threw it in the trash! He was sick of what he had been doing and resolved right there to lose weight.

And he did it. With a new year upon us, I’m sure all of us would like to eat a little healthier, but it’s hard to do when a carton of ice cream is sitting right in front of you. And what typically ends up happening, is you eat the ice cream only to regret your decisions later.

We all know what the answer is: diet and exercise! Eat better and be active. The solution is very simple but difficult to do consistently. At some point, you begin to wonder, do I love ice cream or do I hate diet and exercise?

It seems that the very thing that we need is often the very thing that we hate.

This is precisely what’s going on in our passage. The Jewish religious leaders, the Pharisees knew the Scriptures promised a Messiah. They expected God to send a Savior. But here’s the problem: they hated the Savior that God sent. He didn’t meet their qualifications. He wasn’t doing or saying the things they wanted him to say.

So we see their hatred for Jesus in two clear ways in this passage: first, they want him arrested (vv. 32-34) and second, we see their hatred for Jesus in their mockery of him (vv. 35-37).

Isn’t this the way we tend to deal with things we don’t like? We remove them from our day to day lives or we make fun of them.

Want to Arrest Jesus (vv. 32-34)

So verse 32, picks up where we left off a few weeks ago. The Pharisees are reacting to what was being said about them by the crowd. It’s almost like they weren’t going to do anything until they realized how bad their unresponsiveness appeared to the crowd.

The longer they sat around and did nothing, the more weak and ineffective they appeared. And so, they had to do something.

That’s exactly what John records for us in verse 32: “The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering these things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.”

Notice what the catalyst appears to be here: the “muttering” of the crowd. That was the bur in Pharisees saddle. They couldn’t stand to listen to “the crowd muttering these things about [Jesus].”

And “these things”, that the crowd was “muttering” about was what was referenced earlier in verse 31. In verse 31, the crowd asked amongst themselves, “When the Christ (or Messiah) appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

The crowd was committing a major no-no in the eyes of the Jewish religious leaders. What was the crowd’s offense? Simply wondering out loud if Jesus is who he claims to be. He has already in these first few chapters of John explicitly claimed to be the divinely sent Messiah from the Lord. And guess what? The crowd was beginning to take those claims seriously.

Obviously, the Pharisees had to shut that down. They couldn’t stand by and watch people actually follow Jesus. They needed to do something. They needed to jump into action.

And so, “the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to arrest him.” Because how do you get people to stop taking someone seriously? You arrest them! You remove them from the situation!

They wanted Jesus to cease and desist! But why do the Pharisees care so much?

Because if Jesus isn’t really the Messiah, if he’s wrong and they’re right, won’t it eventually come to light? Why arrest him when they can easily prove him wrong? Clearly, there’s more here than just people getting mad over who is or isn’t the Jewish Messiah.

In the minds of the Pharisees influence and power is at stake, and it’s a zero sum game. If Jesus has influence over Jewish people, that means they don’t.

And not only that, Jesus had embarrassed them in front of the crowd when he told everyone that they wanted him dead. Jesus was not only gaining influence but he was embarrassing them along the way.

Jesus was damaging their image and reputation and they were supposed to be the holy religious ones, not Jesus! They were more important than Jesus! Jesus was humiliating the Pharisees. Was he doing it by mockery and ridicule? Of course not! He humiliated them by simply saying what was true.

The truth of Christ has a humbling effect. Either you willingly humble yourself before the Lord, or one day you’ll be forced to humble yourself before him. Isn’t that what the Apostle Paul means when he says, “every knee will bow in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord?”

You can try to have Jesus arrested, you can fight against him, you can deny him, but it really doesn’t matter because in the end, you will bow to him. The only question is will you do it of your own accord or will you be forced into submission?

But really it’s only when you humble yourself before the Lord does the world around you begin to make sense. It’s the conclusion that the spectators began to make on their own. When Christ comes will he do more than this man? It makes sense that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

Not that long ago, I got into a discussion with a friend about Christianity and his personal beliefs. He told me that there were aspects of Christianity that he liked, implemented new age meditation, and appreciated some practices of Buddhism. And so I asked him why he chose some things and rejected others, was there some standard that he used? Really, at the end of the day, it came down to his personal preferences. He was the standard.

And to be fair, I think what he had done is quite common. It’s not that unusual. But the problem is that it’s extremely incoherent because you’ve made it up. And a religion with you at the center of it fails to explain the world as we know it.

It’s a scary place to be in to look down your nose at Jesus Christ and say, “what you’ve done isn’t enough.” And that’s where you end up if you’re at the center of the universe. Instead of listening to him and asking ourselves, “When the Christ appears, will he do more signs than this man has done?”

This is what was happening with the Jewish religious leaders. Just like so many today, the religious views of the Pharisees revolved around them. It was all about what they did. But here comes Jesus, tearing it down, brick by brick.

Because Jesus didn’t claim generic religious authority. He didn’t say listen to me because I have better policy positions or whatever. Jesus said, listen to me because I am one with the Father. I am God.

He wasn’t an arbitrary authoritative claim. There’s weight and gravitas because he was divine. You don’t get any higher authority or power than from God himself.

And the irony is incredibly rich when you consider the fact that the Pharisees claimed to believe in a Messiah, expected and looked for a Messiah, and yet the Savior that God sent they wanted arrested.

They wanted him out of sight and out of mind. And that’s exactly what you’d get if Jesus is arrested. Order will be restored. Life will go on better when I don’t have to see or deal with Jesus. It’s the same reason, so many avoid the church, avoid God’s Word, avoid Christianity in general because they don’t want their way of life questioned or challenged. It’s so much easier that way!

They couldn’t stand that Jesus was being taken seriously and so they wanted him gone. Jesus challenges all of us! He is constantly calling each of us to greater conformity to him and his Word.

But even Jesus acknowledged that he wouldn’t be with them much longer in verses 33. “I will be with you a little longer, and then I am going to him who sent me.”

Jesus understood that his time on earth was short. We’re only in John chapter 7, but chronologically there wasn’t much time before the crucifixion. The public ministry of Jesus Christ only lasts roughly three years and most of the gospel accounts record the events leading up to his crucifixion and resurrection. And so, Jesus of course knew that his time on Earth would be short and but eventually he would return to his heavenly home, having accomplished what he came to earth to do: take away the sins of the world as the spotless Lamb of God.

Nevertheless, Jesus tells the religious leaders here, that he’s only going to be with them for a little while, and that he’ll soon return to the heavenly Father. I think that’s pretty easy to understand, but what’s more difficult to understand is what he says in verse 34. “You will seek me and you will not find me. Where I am you cannot come.”

Is Jesus obscuring himself from those that may follow him? Why would he do that? Well that’s not what he’s saying at all. Rather, what Jesus is communicating in verse 34 is the Jewish people will search for a Messiah to no avail. They’ll hunger for a promised Savior, but they’ll never find him. Why? Because they rejected him.

They’re actively rejecting the Messiah that they desperately need. What Jesus is saying here is a lot like how Esau wept after selling his birthright to Jacob. What Jesus is saying is articulated well in Proverbs 1:28:

“...they will call upon me, but I will not answer; they will seek me diligently but will not find me.”

In other words, what Jesus is saying here is that they’ll look everywhere for the Messiah. They’ll long for spiritual satisfaction but never find it because they rejected the Lord Jesus.

It reminds me of the problem that I have with New Year's resolutions. It’s not wrong to want to make changes in your life. Trying to make positive changes is good! But my problem with New Year’s resolutions is that they encourage procrastination. It encourages you and me to delay making important changes. It’s easy to think in October, “I’m going to fix that next year.” Like there’s some magic in calling it a “New Year’s Resolution.”

The good news is that today is January 1st, so if you make a change today, it will really come full circle.

Hopefully, you get my point. Don’t put off tomorrow, what can be done today. We shouldn’t wait for a crisis to develop and then try to implement changes, we should try to implement them right now, today.

This is in one sense what Jesus is telling those listening to him in the temple. He’s saying there will be a day when they’ll desperately need a Savior, but it’ll be too late. They’ve already rejected him. They put him off. That’s why Jesus says, “where I am going you cannot come.” He’s saying that you cannot join him in paradise if you reject him.

Don’t make becoming a Christian a New Year’s Resolution. You should submit yourself to Christ today!

They Mock Jesus (vv. 35-36)

But it’s all of this that is enraging the Pharisees. It’s a combination of Jesus accurately accusing them of murderous desire, his teaching, and the crowd taking him seriously. Look at verses 35-36 with me.

“The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? 36 What does he mean by saying, ‘You will seek me and you will not find me,’ and, ‘Where I am you cannot come’?”

In case you can’t tell, they’re mocking Jesus. They’re making fun of him. They pull the classic school yard trick. You don’t like what someone says, so you just make fun of him. You don’t engage with whatever it is that he’s saying. You turn to mockery.

The Jews are making fun of Jesus. “Where does this man intend to go where we won’t be able to find him? Does he think he’s so smart he can get away from us?” Although Jesus isn’t arrested at this point, the Jews clearly think that he intends to evade arrest by going into hiding, even though that's not what Jesus was referring to.

It’s happening again! Jesus speaks of spiritual things and he’s being interpreted literally. But they’re not just mocking Jesus, they’re mocking the Greeks and the Jews that lived among the Greeks. The dispersion is a reference to the Jews that lived among the Greeks.

You can imagine the scene: does Jesus think he’s going to go teach the Jews living among the Greeks? You can almost hear the snickering in the background. But really, it displays an incredible level of elitism. Remember this is all happening in Jerusalem at the temple. It’s the most Jewish thing a Jew could do! Be at the temple in Jerusalem! That’s as good as it gets.

And so, everyone else that lives outside of here are second class citizens. They’re nobodies, because everything important happens right here.

A similar comparison might be to Washington D.C. There’s an elitist stereotype that is synonymous with D.C. Because that’s where all the important decisions in the country are made. All the important stuff happens in D.C. and everyone else is irrelevant.

Obviously not everyone in D.C. is like that, but stereotypes are stereotypes for a reason. They don’t happen by accident. There’s a real level of snobbery on display by the Jews here. Is he going to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks! HAHA!

So the Jews were not only mocking Jesus Christ, they were mocking other races, and Jews that didn’t live among Jewish people!

Because here’s the great irony of ironies - the message of Christ will go to both the Jew and the Greek, because the gospel message is for everyone! Praise God! The good news of Jesus Christ isn’t exclusively to any particular race, or socio-economic level. It cuts across all the different ways we tend to classify people because everyone is saved in the same manner. By grace through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

All of their mockery would come back on their heads, because so many people that they express disdain for here in this passage will have the eyes of their hearts opened to Jesus Christ. The weak will shame the proud.

And this is the point that I made at the beginning of the sermon. The very thing that we often hate, is the very thing that we need.

Jesus Christ, the man that the Jewish religious leaders hated so much, the man that they wanted to kill, the man who’s teaching they could not stand, you see, that man was who they needed to turn themselves over to!

I think this remains true for so many still today. People quickly dismiss Jesus but are willing to give everything else a shot in search of inner peace, contentment, and spiritual satisfaction. People commit themselves to self-help, new age, but never consider Jesus Christ. I know many of you have that story. You pursued happiness apart from Christ which is a fool’s errand. Because it’s only when you turn yourself over to Him that you find what you’ve been looking for.

There should be no aspect of who we are that we’re not willing to turn over to Jesus Christ. Don’t harden your heart and reject Christ like the Jewish religious leaders. Instead of imposing demands on Christ, we must submit ourselves to him exactly the way that he is.

That goes for all of us, even those of us that trust and rest in the Lord Jesus, we should turn over a little more of ourselves to him each and every day. That’s sanctification! Because trusting and resting in the atoning work of Jesus Christ is exactly what we all need and it’s how we get to where Jesus is now. Let’s pray.