WHAT THINK YE OF CHRIST?

John 7:8-19
"You go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come."
When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee.
But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret.
Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?"
And there was much complaining among the people concerning Him. Some said, "He is good"; others said, "No, on the contrary, He deceives the people."
However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.
Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught.
And the Jews marveled, saying, "How does this Man know letters, having never studied?"
Jesus answered them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me.
"If anyone wills to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority.
"He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him.
"Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?"

Message:
In his commentary, Pastor James Boice tells of his experience in preparing to preach from this text which we are studying today. He pastored a wonderful church in Philadelphia. A few days before preaching his sermon, he sent his staff out on the streets of the city with these instructions: Walk up and down the street, asking as many persons as possible, the following question, "WHO IS JESUS CHRIST?" Sometimes they asked, "Do you think Jesus Christ is God?" The answers they received were illuminating, for they revealed the confusion that exists in many person's minds about the identity of this remarkable Man from Nazareth.

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One young woman responded, "Jesus Christ was a man who thought He was God." Another young woman, a biology student, replied, "Jesus Christ is pure essence or energy. God to me is energy, electric energy because it's something that's not known." A man responded, "I think that's something you have to decide for yourself, but He had some beautiful ideas." Others replied, "He is one that we look up to as a leader"; He is an individual who lived two thousand years ago, who was interested in the social betterment of all classes of people"; He was well liked; He meant well; He was a good man." Most people asked were just confused. They answered, "I haven't any idea...I don't know."
Who is Jesus Christ? This is a question that men and women have been asking ever since Christ's time and that needs to be asked and answered again and again in each generation.
Throughout chapter seven of John, he highlights the various opinions the Jews had about Jesus. Before Jesus appeared at the feast, opinions about Him were swirling through the visiting crowd. Some of these Jews many have seen Jesus' miracles or heard Him teach; others may have only heard of what He had done both in Jerusalem and in Galilee. That particular year, Jesus was the hot topic of conversation during the Feast of Tabernacles.
Some of the opinions expressed were: "a good man" (v.l2); "deceiving the crowd into thinking He was the Messiah" (v.l2); "a great teacher" (v. 15); "demon possessed" (v.20); "a doer of miraculous signs" (v.31); "The Prophet" (v. 40); "The Messiah" (v.41). Our chapter began with the observation that the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand, and the brothers of Christ urged Him to hurry up to Jerusalem so that He could do some of His miracles before the vast crowd, thus generating a greater following to His ministry. Verse 5 informs us that these brothers did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah...in fact, they were very skeptical of His sanity!
Christ refused their urgings, and stated that His hour or time had not yet come, and He was going to delay His departure to the Feast. They could go anytime because they were not under a divine time constraint.

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"Then said Jesus unto them, "My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil" (vv. 6-7).
The difference in the "times" of Jesus and of His brothers, and that in the attitude of the world to Him and to them, lead to a difference in conduct. Jesus tells the brothers to go up to the feast. That is the natural thing to do in their position. But He is not in their position. Therefore He is not going up.
There is a difficulty here, for after saying this Jesus does later go to Jerusalem. It is important accordingly to notice that the use of the present tense does not exclude subsequent action of a different kind. Jesus simply says that the brothers should go (the implication being "go now"), and He separates Himself from them. He is refusing to go up at their request and with a view to accomplishing what they set before Him, but He is not refusing to go up. He is working out the implications of His messiahship in His own way, not in theirs. Moreover what they are urging Him to do is to go up to keep the feast. This Jesus did not do, either then or later. He was absent for a good part of the ceremonies, perhaps for all of them. He went up to give certain teaching, not to observe the feast in the manner, of the typical pilgrim. He tells His brothers that His time "is not yet fulfilled." This means that the events in the time of which He speaks have not yet approached their consummation. Until they do He will not act.
At an unspecified time after the brothers went up to the feast, Jesus went up to Jerusalem, too (v.10). But there was a difference...they went up as pilgrims to keep the feast; He went up incognito. People did not know that he was coming. Our scripture says that Jesus did not go up publicly but as it were in secret. This does not mean that Jesus traveled stealthily, but that He went by Himself without being a member of a party of pilgrims. Such a caravan could be quite large. We are told that when the boy Jesus was separated from Joseph and Mary, they spent a whole day looking for Him among the company (Luke 2:44). Clearly the pilgrims from Galilee traveled in large groups, and it would be impossible to be inconspicuous in such a group. Jesus went up in such a way that He did not attract attention

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Verse 11 says: Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?" When John mentions "the Jews" we have noted in our studies that he is referring to the religious leaders of Jerusalem who were hostile to Jesus. They anticipated that Jesus would come up for such an important feast and they kept their eyes open so as not to miss Him.
Evidently the hostility was becoming known and the people realized that it might be dangerous to speak too openly about Jesus, for John goes on to say that there was a "muttering" about Him (v.l2). Not only the leaders but other people as well wondered about Him.
When John says "the crowds" he seems to mean neither the disciples nor the enemies of Jesus, but the multitudes who were not committed to His cause, yet were not hostile either.
Some of them thought Jesus a good man, while others thought of Him as a deceiver. These would largely be pilgrims from a variety of places, and probably a good number of them had never seen nor heard Jesus. They would be relying on what they had heard from others, and their verdicts would depend on their source of information.
"Some said, He is a good man: others said, "Nay; but He deceiveth the people" (7:12). They saw in Jesus a mere demagogue, a man to be shunned, a false prophet, one who was interested in getting the crowd or mob on His side, ingratiating Himself with the multitudes for selfish purposes. Others said that He was a good man. That verdict is true, but it is not the whole truth. It was Napoleon who made the famous remark: "I know men, and Jesus Christ is more than a man." Jesus was indeed truly man; but in Him was the mind of God. When He speaks it is not one man speaking to another; if that were so we might argue about His commands. When Jesus speaks, it is God speaking to men.
"He is a good man." Many give this answer today when asked who Jesus Christ is, but it is one thing that Jesus most certainly cannot be!
You ask..."Why is that?" It is because of the peculiar nature of His teachings. One of their most obvious features is what John Stott calls their "egocentric character." Jesus' teaching is all wrapped up in Himself. For instance, Jesus often spoke of the Fatherhood of God, but whenever He did that He seemed always

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to go on to speak of the special relationship that He had to the Father, possessed by no other. He even had a special word for God, ABBA, which revealed His special relationship. It meant "DADDY". No contemporary Jewish figure ever used this word for God: it would have been thought irreverent or even blasphemous. Yet Jesus used it. Moreover, He went on to teach that because of what He would accomplish on the cross, and only because of that, others could come to enjoy this relationship also. Jesus is more than a good man...He is the infinite God-Man!
The impossibility of considering Jesus to be merely a good man is seen in the fact that on several occasions He openly claimed to be God. In the climate of the Judaism of His day, this could not be done often or openly, for it was blasphemy and a capital offense. Nevertheless, there were times when Jesus allowed the issue to become clear. For example, in the eighth chapter of John there is the record of a conversation between Jesus and the Jewish rulers over the relationship of Jews to Abraham. They thought they were saved because of their physical descent from Abraham. Jesus denied it. They became angry and attacked Him personally. "Are you greater than our father Abraham?" they asked. Jesus answered, "Before Abraham was born, I am." (John 8:58) This so offended those who heard Him that they began to pick up stones to throw at Him and kill Him. They did this because they recognized the claim to divinity that Christ's words implied. At the least these words were a claim to preexistence; that is, Jesus claimed to have existed in the beginning with God before Abraham was created. In addition, however, they were also a claim to be God Himself. For Christ's "I am" was the very name for God—Jehovah—which means, "I am who I am." (Exodus 3:14). It was because of this claim that those who heard Jesus took up stones to kill Him.
A second example of the same claim occurs when Jesus appeared to Thomas shortly after the Resurrection. Thomas had said that he would not believe in Jesus' resurrection unless he could put his finger in the nail prints of Jesus' hands and his hand into Jesus' side. But when Jesus appeared, Thomas did not insist on these tests. Instead, he fell at Jesus feet, declaring, "My Lord and my God." What did Jesus do? Did He reply, as

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Paul and Barnabas did later in a similar situation, "Men why are you doing this? We too are only men, human like you" (Acts 14:15). Not at all! Christ accepted the designation of this doubting apostle, adding, "Because you have seen me, you have believed, blessed are those who have not seen, and yet have believed." (John 20:29).
What are we to do with these claims? We cannot escape them. As John Stott observes, "The claims are there. They do not in themselves constitute evidence of deity. The claims may have been false. But some explanation of them must be found. We cannot any longer regard Jesus as simply a great teacher, if He was so grievously mistaken in one of the chief subjects of His teaching, namely Himself." In the same way, C.S. Lewis has written, "You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."
Jesus Christ is more than just a good man...He is God manifest in human form! The really staggering Christian claim is that Jesus of Nazareth was God made man—that the second person of the Godhead became the "second man" (1 Cor. 15:47), determining human destiny, the second representative head of the race, and that He took humanity without loss of deity, so that Jesus of Nazareth was as truly and fully divine as He was human. Here are two mysteries for the price of one— the plurality of persons within the unity of God, and the union of Godhead and manhood in the person of Jesus. It is here, in the thing that happened at the first Christmas, that the profoundest and most unfathomable depths of the Christian revelation lie! "The Word became flesh" (John 1:14); God became man; the divine Son became a Jew; the Almighty appeared on earth as a helpless human baby, unable to do more than lie and stare and wriggle and make noises, needing to be fed and changed and taught to talk like any other child. And there was no illusion or deception in this; the babyhood of the Son of God was a reality!

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How are we to think of the Incarnation? The New Testament does not encourage us to puzzle our heads over the physical and psychological problems that it raises, but to worship God for the love that was shown in it.
According to our text, one's opinion about Jesus could not be expressed openly for fear of the Jews. As we have noted earlier, the JEWS refers to the Jewish leaders in particular who had a great deal of power over the common people. Apparently these leaders couldn't do much to Jesus at this time, but they threatened anyone who might publicly support Him. They could use excommunication from the synagogue as a reprisal for believing in Jesus (9:22). Jews considered this a severe punishment. Jesus' listeners had their opinions but they were afraid to express them and this created a power stalemate between the religious leaders and the crowds. Public opinion had not reacted strongly enough against Jesus to give the leaders a free hand in dealings with Him; yet public opinion did not support Jesus enough to diminish the hopes the leaders had to eliminate Him at the first opportunity!
Observation! Everyone was talking about Jesus! But when it came time to speak up for Him in public, no one said a word. All were afraid. Fear can stifle our witness. Although many people talk about Christ in church, when it comes to making a public statement about Him and their faith, they are often embarrassed. Jesus said that He will acknowledge us before God if we acknowledge Him before others (Matthew 10:32). Let's be courageous! Let's speak up for Christ every time we have the opportunity.
In verse 14 of our text, it says: "Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and taught." All of a sudden Jesus appeared in the temple. The feast which lasted fully a week (Lev. 23:26) was already half over. With so many pilgrims in Jerusalem, many of whom were sufficiently interested in Jesus and sympathetic toward Him that harming Him might have led to difficulties for those in charge, really adequate preparations for His arrest were no longer possible.
Jesus then, having found a convenient place for Himself (perhaps in the court of the Gentiles) sat down, as was the customary posture of those who taught. A crowd of listeners quickly gathered, whom He started to instruct.

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Presently some of the hostile leaders joined the audience. They listened for a while. Then, startled by the character and contents of the words which they heard, these men, who were never ready to admit any true greatness on the part of the Lord, were able to contain themselves no longer. The Jews therefore were amazed about His audacity. Their anger exploded in a vituperative exclamation concerning Jesus, and they said to the crowd: HOW CAN THIS FELLOW KNOW LETTERS WITHOUT AN EDUCATION? When the Jews heard Jesus, they marveled at His ability to know "letters" (GRAMUMATA), having never studied. They were not wondering about Jesus' ability to read or write: they were amazed that He could interpret the Scriptures without being trained as a rabbi.
In other words, for them, Jesus had no official human certification. He spoke with authority without relying on license or degree to legitimize His teaching. Jesus did not dress like a rabbi, but He applied the Scriptures as no rabbi they had ever heard!
"Jesus answered them and said, "MY DOCTRINE IS NOT MINE BUT HIS WHO SENT ME." Not taught by man, nor self-taught, but instructed by God Himself, that was His answer! Not only had He derived the contents of His teaching from His Father in heaven, but He had also been divinely commissioned to convey it to the people on earth. Let His enemies take note to this fact; namely, that in rejecting Him and His message they are rejecting God Himself!
Jesus' response is to say that His teaching is not His own. We should notice here that in the first century there was a different attitude toward teaching from our customary view. We prize highly an original teacher, but the ancients did not. There was a widespread idea that there had been a Golden Age in the remote past and that at that time men had been greater and wiser and stronger than their successors. Thus, Jewish teaching was based upon the teachings of past rabbis. If the teacher did not quote a rabbi, his teaching was held in suspect!
But the words and teachings of Christ are the words and truths of God. There is no higher authority! Everything that Jesus taught is eternally important to us and we do well to heed His words and be obedient to His commands. The grass will fade away, the world we now know will pass away, but His words will endure forever!