16th Feb 2011

John 7:45-53 – Unbelief of the Jewish Leaders.

• “Warts and all – a warning to leaders!”
• The Temple guards return but not with Jesus.
• This angers the Pharisees who sent them out for that express reason.
• On their return they chide the guards and their pride leads them to point out two things. One is certainly false and both are possibly untrue.
• Firstly, in the form of a question they infer than none of them [the religious leaders of Israel] had put their faith in Jesus. As well as being a prideful statement it was possibly untrue; Nicodemus had at least put enough Faith in Jesus wisdom to pursue him at night. Had he done more than that?
• Secondly and more importantly; they seem to lie to the guards about the fact that no prophet had come out of Galilee.
• That was not true; Jonah was from Galilee.
• Even the Talmud, the Jewish set of rabbinical teachings agrees that this is untrue;
• “There was not a tribe in Israel that did not produce ptrophets”. Recorded statement by Rabbi Eli’ezer in Sukkah 72b.
• The greek text means that they could have been saying that no prophet will in the future come out of Galilee – but this seems unlikely as it is a mute point. Not all prophets were prophesied about.
• The Leaders were falling into a trap that Christian leaders must always avoid!
• They were lying by hiding the full truth.
• And they were doing it to promote there particular point of view.
• But in the guise of protecting their flock from heresy.
• It happens more often that we like to admit.
• If we have faith in the word of God we should not need to do this.
• Transparency allows the Bible to work its magic rather than us to work our manipulation.
• Teaching truth is not the only important thing… teaching truth truthfully is!
• The Bible is full of difficulties, problems, questions, conflicts, paradox and our translations have human interpretation all over them.
• My old Pastor; Harry Letson used to say that the great thing about the Bible is it comes ‘warts and all’ – referring to an old historic character who, when he had his portrait commissioned, told the painter not to effectively airbrush him but to include all his odd characteristics….”warts and all”.
• I’ve sat under Harry’s preaching and many others. Not all have been as honest as he was and so I still thank God for Harry – he made a point of pointing out other perspectives. Something that I hope I can learn from.
• Thanking God today for Harry.