John 7:1-18 After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him.… I. BASE COWARDICE AND SUBLIME COURAGE. 1. Base cowardice (vers. 11-13). (1) For these chief men of the nation to be in cunning search for the life of one lonely man. "Where is He?" We want Him. What for? To listen to His doctrines? honestly to test His merits, to do honour to His person or His mission? No; but to kill Him. Here are a number of influential men banded together to crush one humble peasant! (2) In the people meeting together in secrecy, and talking about Him. Why not openly? Sin is always cowardly: virtue alone is courageous. Sin's talk is swaggering, and its attitude often defiant; but it is essentially craven-hearted. "Thou wear a lion's hide! Doff it for shame, and hang a calf's skin on those recreant limbs" (Shakespeare). 2. In contrast with this, we have the sublimest courage (ver. 14). When the festival was at its height, and the concourse swollen to the greatest number, and national enthusiasm most intense, this poor peasant Reformer confronted public sentiment when its billows were thundering at high tide. Where in all history have you an example of courage comparable to this? II. CONVENTIONAL SCHOLARSHIP AND DIVINE INTELLIGENCE. 1. Conventional scholarship (ver. 15). The question breathes contempt. The idea is, He has never been to our seats of learning and studied under our rabbis; what can He know? He is an uneducated man and, forsooth, presumes to teach. There is much of this spirit now. There are those who hold that a man cannot know much unless he has graduated at some university. This is a great fallacy; some of the most educated men have never passed the college curriculum. This idea fills society with pedants, and our pulpits with men who have neither the kind of lore, or genius to preach the gospel. 2. Divine intelligence. Note here that(1) God is the sole Teacher of the highest doctrine (ver. 16). Although I have not studied under you, rabbis, I have got my knowledge directly from the primal source of all true intelligence. Do not content yourself with sipping at the streams of conventional teachings, go to the fountain head. (2) Obedience is the qualification for obtaining the highest knowledge (ver. 17). Philosophy and experience show the truth of this. "The essence of goodness consists in wishing to be good," says Seneca. And well too as Pascal said, that "a man must know earthly things in order to love them, but that he must love heavenly things in order to know them."(3) Entire devotion of self to the Divine is necessary in order to communicate the highest knowledge (ver. 18). It is not only as a man becomes self-oblivious, and lost in the love and thoughts of God, that he can reflect the bright rays of Divine intelligence upon his fellow-men. We must allow ourselves to become mere channels through which the Divine will flow. (D. Thomas, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him. |
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