August 16, 2015            John 7:30 – 52

Download discussion questions:  John 7_30 – 52 speaking of the Spirit

Confusion – that seemed to be the dominant impression among our discussion group about what was happening in this passage.  One group wants to arrest Jesus.  Others think He might be the Christ, or at least The Prophet, a second Moses promised near the end of Moses’ life (Deuteronomy 18:15-18).  A few days earlier during this visit to Jerusalem some in the crowd accused Him of having a demon.  His teaching without formal training mystified those who had the training.  The crowd was unclear about whether or not the leaders really wanted to kill Him.  The religious police are sent to arrest Jesus and come back empty-handed.  All this in the context of a huge and presumably noisy crowd.  Confusion.

Speculation about who Jesus might be has been a recurring theme among the crowds (John 6:14) and even the religious leaders about John the Baptist in John 1:19-22.  One person in our group suggested that a primary cause of the confusion among the crowd and the leaders was their own fault.  They were more interested in speculating about Him than about listening to Him.  Most of the people were listening to everyone else but not to Jesus.  They had heard a little of His teaching, and they had heard about His miraculous signs, and some had probably eaten the multiplied bread and fish He provided.  Now they were off into their own opinions and debating who had the best ideas about Him.  Rather than listening to Him carefully to see what they could learn they assumed they knew enough.  One of their arguments that they found most convincing (and we might see as the most ironic) related to His birthplace.  Both the general population (v. 41) and the legal experts (v. 52) used the argument that “no prophet arises out of Galilee.”  Even the crowd of people knew their Bible well enough to be certain that only someone born in Bethlehem could be the Christ (v. 42).  If they had listened to Jesus, and maybe asked a few questions they probably would have learned that He was indeed born in Bethlehem in fulfillment of one of many prophecies pointing to Him as the Messiah they were looking for.  Instead of listening and asking questions (“What can we learn about this man?”) they were more interested in displaying and debating their own expertise (“Let me tell you what I know about this man”).  I confess that I could not help pointing out how often our tendency in many Bible study opportunities encounters a similar problem.  We tend to want to tell each other what we already know about the teaching of the Bible rather than asking what we can learn from the text.  One of the goals of our approach to studying the Gospel of John in this group has been to focus on the text and what we can learn from a particular passage.

A possible exception to the failure to actually listen to Jesus is found in the officers sent to arrest Jesus.  Amid the confusion surrounding Jesus this group listened enough at least to prevent them from arresting Him.  “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks” was their defense when they returned to the chief priests and Pharisees.  It is unlikely they would have shirked their assigned duty (and risked who-knows-what punishment from their religious authorities) based on a casual “hearsay impression” about what Jesus was saying.  They listened enough to question their orders.  After the ridicule by their astonished superiors Nicodemus offered support for their decision.  The arrest order itself may have been illegal since the requirements to hear what Jesus was saying was the first step – and they had ordered his arrest on the basis of the “muttering” of the crowds (v. 32) – they were judging Jesus based on their own “hearsay impressions” of Him and His teaching.

So what did the officers hear that so affected them?  Between v. 32 when they are sent to arrest Him and v. 45 when they return without Him Jesus did say some startling things.  He started talking about water and moved that image into the overflowing of the Spirit.  Why water?  When Jesus met the woman at the well (John 4) He used water as a conversation starter that engaged the woman.  The request for a drink led to a description of “springing up to eternal life” (John 4:14) that got her attention.  But why would Jesus return to that image of flowing water in this setting, in the Temple in Jerusalem, specifically (as John points out) on the last day, the climax of the week-long religious celebration?  One member of the group had done some research ahead of our time together.

For at least the first seven days of the feast, priests marched in procession from the Pool of Siloam to the temple and poured out water at the base of the altar.  Pilgrims to the feast watched this ritual, which Jews throughout the Roman world this knew….  The public reading of Scripture at the feast included the one passage in the Prophets that emphasized this feast, Zechariah 14, which was interpreted in conjunction with Ezekiel 47.  Together these texts taught that rivers of living water would flow forth from the temple….[1]

Here is a good example of a very helpful use of a resource outside of the text.  After reading the text we might wonder why Jesus would have used water as the starting point for His teaching about the Spirit.  The IVP Bible Background Commentary provided helpful insight not obvious to most modern, Gentile readers.  The crowd had been watching this ceremonial water flow all week.  Later John’s Jewish readers would make the connection as well.  Watching the water overflow from the base of the altar provided a week-long illustration of the richness of the life Jesus was offering.  The overflow of the work of the Holy Spirit (another hint of the Trinity) is like the “living waters flowing out of Jerusalem” (Zechariah 14:8) pictured by the priests’ ritual water.  No wonder the officers hesitated and decided not to arrest Jesus.  This sounded much different from the Law and the rules and regulations they were used to hearing about.  Unlike the crowd and the leaders, they listened.  And what they heard affected them deeply.

Toward the end of our discussion time one person mentioned another Old Testament reference to “living water” in Jeremiah’s contrast between God, “the fountain of living waters” and the self-made “broken cisterns that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13).  Jesus was offering that fountain, that continually renewed and refreshed and abundantly overflowing life of His Spirit.  We are not immune to broken cisterns.  The Jews in the days of Jeremiah and the days of Jesus expected their life to come from strict observance of the Law.  We easily fall into the unspoken assumption that life comes to us from many other sources – family, church, health, job, finances.  Like God’s Law these are good things, but they are not ultimate things.  The flowing fountain of our communion with the Triune God – knowing the Father through the Son by the Spirit – is the source.  Even our best attempts to know God can fall into the “broken cisterns” category when we lose sight of that ultimate relationship and focus on the activities that are supposed to build that relationship.  An hour or so after our discussion group ended I read this (God’s providential timing as always):

The central paradox of the spiritual path is that in striving to transcend the self, we actually build it up; our holy solutions invariably calcify into grotesque casts of ego. Getting real is harder than we’ve been led to believe. The real gift, the real grace, is surrender, and surrender almost always feels like a defeat and a failure.[2]

Our best efforts at good things (Bible study, family life, serving others, and on and on) can become subtle cisterns of our selves that we look to for satisfaction and fulfilment rather than the continuous flow of God’s Spirit into and through and out from our lives.  May the life-giving, overflowing Spirit protect us from letting that happen.

[1] Craig Keener, ed., The IVP Bible Background Commentary – New Testament (Downers Grove, Illinois:  InterVarsity Press, 1993), 283.

[2] Tim Farrington, A Hell of Mercy (New York:  Harper One, 2009), 115-116; quoted by Larry Crabb, Fully Alive (Grand Rapids, Michigan:  Baker Books, 2013), 147.