Church of the Holy City

Jesus’ Credibility

Jesus’ Credibility
Rev. Dr. David J. Fekete
December 21, 2008

John 6:61-7:1-52

Thank you for bearing with me through that lengthy Bible reading. It all formed one story unit, so I felt I needed to go through the whole story unit. I selected this reading because of the powerful impression it made on me when I read through it. It is a passage you almost never hear. What struck me most about it is how human it makes Jesus. It shows Jesus in dialogue with his brothers. It shows him making decisions about his public appearance. It shows him trying to establish his credibility. And it shows how hard it was for people in his own age to decide on who he really was. It shows the people of his time trying to make his powerful presence fit with the prophecies they had grown up reading and believing.
When we think of the beginnings of Jesus ministry, we think of the vision given us in the synoptic Gospels—that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. The Mark story begins with Jesus baptism, His temptation, and then with his instant emergence in Israel as a wonder worker. The same is true of Luke’s account. Right after Jesus’ baptism, he returns to Galilee and Luke tells us that, “news about him spread through the whole countryside,” and that “everyone praised him” (4:14). Likewise in Matthew, after Jesus’ baptism and the calling of the 12 Apostles, Jesus springs into his ministry in full glory. Matthew tells us that, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people. News about him spread all over Syria . . . Large crowds from Galilee, the Decapolis (10 major cities in Asia Minor), Jerusalem, Judea, and the region across the Jordan followed him (4:23, 24, 25). But the story we find in John gives us a much different view of Jesus.
What was particularly striking to me in this passage from John is that Jesus had to establish his credibility. In the John account, this was a challenge. Jesus had to decide the best time for him to make a public appearance. And John’s account shows how difficult it was for the public to figure out just who this powerful man from Galilee was. It shows the crowd vacillating—some falling away some accepting Jesus—but everyone trying to figure out who He was. The public acceptance of Jesus was a much more complex process in John than we find in the Synoptics.
Jesus didn’t come with any of the right credentials. He wasn’t educated as a Pharisee or a scribe, he was a carpenter’s son. He wasn’t from Judea, which is where the Messiah was supposed to come from, so the Pharisees didn’t believe him to be either The Prophet predicted in Deuteronomy 18:18 or the Messiah. All Jesus had to establish his credibility was the power of his words. And for many, this was sufficient.
John speaks about the power of Jesus’ words and at the same time shows how his words alone were the credibility a carpenter’s son didn’t have. John writes, “The Jews were amazed and asked, ‘How did this man get such learning without having studied?” (7:13). On this all the Gospels agree. They all testify to the power of Jesus’ teachings, how profoundly His words affected the people who heard him. So Matthew writes, “the crowds were amazed at his teachings, because he taught as one who had authority, and not as the teachers of the law” (7:28-29). This statement is echoed in Mark 1:22, and Luke 4:32. In John, Jesus tells his disciples that his words are spirit and life, and it was to that spirit and life that the people responded.
Those who did believe were largely the uneducated mob, whose minds weren’t filled with teachings from Jewish scriptures—teachings that had become codified and corrupted by men’s interpretations over the centuries. John tells us that it was the crowd, not the spiritual leaders who were most taken by Jesus’ teachings, “many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?” (7:31). The educated religious leaders, that it, the Pharisees, smugly looked down on the uneducated mob who were so taken by Jesus’ words, “‘Has any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in him? No! But this mob that knows nothing of the law—there is a curse on them” (7:48).
Jesus didn’t have the credentials that the religious leaders themselves had, nor did this amazing man have the proper credentials that the Messiah was supposed to have. So in the eyes of the religious leaders, Jesus had no authority. Some of the people can’t figure out just who this Jesus is, and they admit that they don’t have the education to figure it out. So some rely on the conclusions of the religious leaders. The people ask, “Have the authorities really concluded he is the Christ?” (7:26) But this contradicts the way the prophesies had been interpreted, “But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from” (7:27). Then there was the issue of Jesus birth. The Messiah was supposed to come from David’s line, which would mean he would be from Judea. So the people again were trying to make sense out of this remarkable man, who didn’t fit their understanding of scripture. “Still others asked, ‘How can the Christ come from Galilee? Does not the Scripture say that the Christ will come from David’s family and from Bethlehem, the town where David lived?’ Thus the people were divided because of Jesus” (7:41-43). Matthew and Luke make a point of having Jesus’ family go down to Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth and then returning to Nazareth where he grew up. Also Matthew and Luke trace Jesus’ genealogy and make a point of drawing his lineage through David. But this isn’t in John, and the people knew only that Jesus came from Galilee, not Judea. The temple guards refuse to arrest Jesus because of the power of his words, even though the Pharisees ordered them to. This causes the Pharisees to chide the temple guards for being taken in by Jesus. They quote scripture to show how Jesus couldn’t be the prophet predicted in Deuteronomy. “Are you from Galilee, too? Look into it, and you will find that the Prophet does not come out of Galilee” (7:52).
Jesus’ words may have been powerful. They may have been spirit and life. But they were also controversial. And even the crowds did not know how to take him. When Jesus tells the disciples that he came down from heaven, it was too much for some to take. So John tells us that, “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him” (6:66). In remarkable question, Jesus even shows very human doubt in his 12 apostles. He asks, “You do not want to leave too, do you?” (6:67). So John sums up how dramatically divided the crowds were about Jesus, “Thus the people were divided because of Jesus. Some wanted to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him” (7:43-44).
Then there is that fascinating discussion between Jesus and his brothers. To my knowledge, this is the only time Jesus’ brothers enter the Gospel narrative in any of the 4 Gospels. Out of this dialogue we find that Jesus carefully considered when and how to make himself known to the people. We first find out that Jesus purposely stayed away from Judea because he knew they were trying to kill him there. So often we hear that the mob didn’t seize Jesus because His time had not yet come. Here, however, we see that His time had not come because He purposely stayed away from those who wanted to kill Him. So in this case it wasn’t miraculous divine intervention that prevented Jesus from being taken, but his own prudent calculation. But as the time for the Feast of Tabernacles comes around, Jesus’ brothers appear to be baiting him. They question Jesus about his public relations policies. They tell him to go to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. “No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret” (7:4). What follows is a discussion between Jesus and his brothers about how best to become known to the public. John tells us that Jesus’ own brothers didn’t believe in him. So Jesus tells his brothers to go to the feast and that he would stay home. After his brothers leave, Jesus sneaks into Jerusalem alone, as John tells us, “not publicly, but in secret” (7:10). He waited until half way into the Feast and then made his first public appearance. On the last and greatest day of the feast, Jesus shouts out in a loud voice that those who come to him will have streams of living water within them. It would appear that Jesus gauged the tone of his teachings to follow the momentum of the feast. This was Jesus big entrance into Jerusalem, and also this account isn’t in the other three Gospels.
I find this chapter fascinating because it shows deliberate planning on Jesus’ part about how he would make his grand public appearance in Jerusalem, the spiritual center of the Jews. It also shows that some people fell away from Jesus on account of his teachings, yet Jesus stood true to the Gospel message He knew from on high. On this subject we have that so human question that Jesus asks his 12, “You do not want to leave me too, do you?” This chapter is also fascinating because in it we see that the Jews of Jesus’ time were trying to make sense out of Jesus. They felt the power and authority of his teachings, but Jesus the man didn’t fit their understanding of scripture. The prophesies of the Messiah didn’t fit Jesus’ credentials. We see that those most educated in Jewish religion rejected Jesus on the basis of their knowledge of scripture. And we see that Jesus was largely accepted only by the uneducated crowds, who judged Jesus by his words, not by what they had been taught by rabbis, and scribes and other religious teachers. In this John account, we find a startling testimony to just how hard it was for Jesus in the beginning to bring his New Testament to the Jews of the first century AD.