John 7:31-36 And many of the people believed on him, and said, When Christ comes, will he do more miracles than these which this man has done?… (text and John 13:33): — 1. No greater contrast can be conceived than between these two groups. The one consists of the officers sent to seize Christ, but were restrained by an awe inexplicable even to themselves. The other consists of the little company of His faithful, though slow scholars. Hatred animated the one, love the other. 2. Christ speaks to them both nearly the same words, but with what a different tone, meaning, and application. To the officers they exhibit the triumphant confidence that their Maker is omnipotent. When He wills He will go, not be dragged, to a safe asylum, where foes cannot follow Him. The officers do not understand. They think, that bad Jew as they have always believed Him to be, He may consummate His apostasy by going over to the Gentiles altogether; but at any rate they feel that He is going to escape their hands. The disciples understand little more, and though the upper side of the saying seems to be full of separation, there is an underside that suggests reunion. 3. The words are nearly the same, but they are not quite identical. I. THE TWO SEEKINGS. 1. The enemies are told they will never find Him. (1) No man with hostile intent seeking for Christ can ever find Him. All the antagonism that has stormed against Him and His cause has been impotent and vain. The pursuers are like dogs chasing a bird which all the while carols in the sky. As in the days of His flesh His foes could not touch His person till He chose, so ever since no weapon that is formed against His cause or His friends shall prosper. All Christian service is a prolongation of Christ's, and both are immortal and safe. (2) But it is not only hostile seeking that is vain. When the dark days came over Israel, and amidst the agonies of that last seige, do you not think that many of these people said, "Ah! if we had only Jesus back for a day or two." They sought Him not in anger any more, nor in penitence, or they would have found Him, but simply in distress, and wishing that they could have back again what they had cared so little for when they had it. And are there none to whom the words apply, "He that will not when he may, when he will it shall be nay."(3) There is another kind of vain seeking — intellectual, without the preparation of the heart. Many a man goes in quest for religious certainty and looks at, if not for Jesus, and is not capable of discerning Him when He sees Him because His eye is not single, or his heart is full of worldliness and indifference, or he begins with a foregone conclusion. He will never find Him. 2. The seeking that is not vain. "Ye shall seek Me," to any heart that loves Christ is not a sentence of separation, but the blessed law of Christian life. (1) That life is one great seeking after Christ. Love seeks the absent. If we care anything for Him at all our hearts will turn to Him as naturally as when the winter begins to pinch, the birds seek the sunny south. The same law which sends loving thoughts across the globe to seek husband, child, or friend, sets the Christian heart seeking for Christ. (2) And if you do not seek Him you will lose Him, for there is no way of keeping a person who is not before our eyes near us except by diligent effort — thought meditating, love going out towards Him, will submitting. Unless there be this effort you will lose your Master like the child in a crowd loses his nurse if his hand slips from the protecting hand. (3) And that seeking in this threefold form is neither a seeking which starts from a sense of non-possession, nor one which ends in disappointment. We seek Him because we possess Him, and that we may have Him more abundantly, and it is as impossible that such a search shall be vain as that lungs dilated shall not fill with air. A mother will sometimes hide that the child's delight may be the greater in searching and finding; and so Christ has gone away for one thing that He may stimulate our desires after Him. II. THE TWO CANNOTS. "Whither I go ye cannot come," says He to His enemies, with no limitation or condition. To His friends He only says, "now," and "thou shalt follow Me afterwards." So then Christ is somewhere, He has gone into a place as well as a state, and there friend and enemy alike cannot enter while compassed with "the earthly house." But the incapacity goes deeper, no sinful man can pass within. Heaven is a prepared place for prepared people. Our power to enter there depends on our union with Christ by faith, and that will effect the preparation. (A. Maclaren, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And many of the people believed on him, and said, When Christ cometh, will he do more miracles than these which this man hath done? |
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