The Jews were amazed and asked, "How did this man attain such learning without having studied?" Sermons I. AS THE QUESTION OF GENERAL INTEREST. There is no doubt that Jesus was the most interesting person of that age. His mighty works and his wonderful teaching had excited the interest of the general public, and had stirred society to its utmost depth. How many persons there were concerning whom no question was asked! They might come and go almost unnoticed. But not so Jesus. The general question with regard to him was, "Where is he?" His movements were keenly watched, and his presence or absence was keenly noticed. II. AS THE QUESTION OF WONDER. Although he was not at the last Passover, still he was in the habit of attending the national feasts at Jerusalem; and this being one of the chief, and probably rumours had reached the city of his intention to be present and being now late, wonder would naturally express itself by the question, "Where is he?" III. AS THE QUESTION OF CURIOSITY. There was a large class to whom Jesus was only a curiosity. In them he excited no other sentiment. They stood in the rear, watching with avidity the actions of those in front. They had neither love nor hatred, but still were busy and interested in the strange phenomenon of his life, and perhaps no sentiment with regard to him would ask the question more often and flippantly, "Where is he?" IV. AS THE QUESTION OF DOUBT. Doubt with regard to Jesus at this time was very prevalent. The multitude who represented the national idea of the Messiah were doubtful of him. Many of them had recently left him, and had apparently given up the hope of his consenting to be crowned the temporal King of the Jews. Still many of them even were doubtful as to this, and the disciples were not quite free from doubt on this matter. They still clung to the hope, but his absence from the feast, from such a public gathering and an advantageous occasion, would make the most sanguine doubtful, and they would impatiently ask, "Where is he?" V. AS THE QUESTION OF HATRED. No feeling could be more present in the question than this, especially when we consider that it was asked by the Jews; for the dominant party were bitter, confirmed, and almost unanimous in their hatred to him and his ministry. And in the question as coming from them there was scarcely a spark of any other feeling but confirmed and seething hatred. They were in a region far below that of curiosity and doubt; they were in that of hatred and bloodshed. VI. AS THE QUESTION OF SINCERE AFFECTION. Those who entertained this feeling were in a small minority, still it is not too much to think that in that vast and generally antagonistic crowd there was many a one who would re-echo the question even from the lips of malice and hatred, and send it forth filled with gratitude and love. "Where is he?" - he who healed my son or my daughter, he who is kind and so full of grace and truth? We know of one, at least, among the members of the Jewish Sanhedrin who would ask it as a question of love - Nicodemus. Genuine love and faith were not quite unrepresented in the inquiries concerning Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles. CONCLUSIONS. 1. The wonderful power of language as the instrument of thought and sentiments. The same words may convey different feelings. Murder and love may travel in the same vehicle. "Where is he?" 2. People in all ages make inquiries concerning Jesus Christ from different motives and with different intentions. Their language may be almost the same - "Where is he?" but the motive's and intentions are different and various. 3. It is of paramount importance with what motives and intentions we inquire for Christ. No motive nor intention is worthy of him but faith and the salvation of the soul. 4. Blessed are those who ask with living faith," Where is he?" He will soon appear and satisfy all their wants. -B.T.
Now about the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the Temple and taught. Whatever theory men hold respecting Christ's person and work, all regard Him as an unparalleled teacher. Four things distinguish Him from all His competitors.I. HE POPULARIZED RELIGION. The common people heard Him gladly. What audiences He drew I When He began to teach religion had lost its hold on the world. People were wearied of the parodies which went by the name. Christ taught that it was not a doctrine but a life; not a speculation, but a love; not conversion to a sect, but change of heart; and that teaching was at once a revelation and a revolution. What, in despair, the people had come to regard as dreary and repulsive, He made them feel was bright and beautiful, and so popularized religion. II. HE REVOLUTIONIZED THINKING. It is more important to make men think aright than to teach them what is right. You cannot ensure their believing or obeying your instruction, but if you can start them in conscientious search of what is good, you do them enduring service. Christ did both, but pre-eminently He liberated the intellect and rationalized its operations. There was plenty of colossal thinking before Christ, but it was simply constructive speculation or destructive criticism. And when He came, it was not as another philosopher, to build another stagey system. Men complain that His thinking is defective because fragmentary; but this is its strength. When men asked for His principles He threw in a simple sentence, "You must be born again," "Love your neighbour," some terse, pregnant phrase which has become the current mental coin of the leading people of the earth. Any other teacher would have said, "Come into my class-room and take my lectures; the curriculum is seven years." Christ could settle it in seven minutes. 1. He initiated spontaneous judgment. Instead of sending people to books, He sent them to their own hearts. 2. He introduced liberty of conscience. Whoever heard of men demanding freedom to think and judge for themselves before He came? And yet that freedom has been a ruling maxim of society since. Out of these two changes have grown infinite results, and are quite sufficient to prove that He revolutionized thinking. III. HE REORGANIZED SOCIETY. The liberty He vindicated involved equality and fraternity. It is fashionable to denounce Socialism, and when it becomes Nihilism or Communism it is a senseless burlesque. He meant that men should serve each other, and not that the lazy should share with the diligent; that as there was a common Fatherhood in God there must be a common brotherhood among men. So He reconstructed society on the basis of mutual respect and reciprocal love. This reconstruction meant — 1. That He recruited our hopes. He came to a weary world. Then a few proud, petrified men ruled, and the heart of the crowd was crushed and despairing. The Beatitudes fell on their sad hearts like rain on a drooping flower, and they looked up and felt that a new chance was open to them all. So it is wherever Christ comes now. 2. That He verified our aspirations. Men sighed for another world, but they scarcely knew whether or not to look for it. He came and said, "If it were not so I would have told you; I go to prepare a place for you." IV. HE DIGNIFIED PASSION. Passion, whether good or bad, is the greatest power in the world. When He came it was everywhere disordered. He purified and released and transformed it into affection. Up to that time men knew not exactly what to make of the emotions implied by such words as sorrow, pain, suffering. He gave them at once a status and vindicated their place in the economy of God. The tendency previously was to stifle pathos, and sneer at sentiment. He sanctified and employed them for the noblest ends. (W. R. Attwood.) Wherein did its peculiar power consist? The secret of its influence lies in no peculiar excellence of diction. Jesus was no poet, orator, or philosopher. It is not the charm of poetry that attracts us, not the ingenious application which surprises, not flights of eloquence which carry us away, not bold speculation which evokes our astonishment. No one could speak with more simplicity than Jesus, whether on the Mount, in the parables, or in the high priestly prayer. But this is the very reason of His influence, that He utters the greatest and most sublime truths in the present words, so that, as Pascal says, one might almost think He was Himself unconscious what truths He was propounding, only He expressed them with much clearness, certainty, and conviction, that we see how well He knew what He was saying. We cannot fail to see that the world of eternal truth is His home, and that His thoughts have constant intercourse therewith. He speaks of God and of His relation to Him, of the super- mundane world of spirits, of the future world and the future life of man; of the kingdom of God upon earth, of its nature and history; of the highest moral truths, and of the supreme obligations of man; in short, of all the greatest problems and deepest enigmas of life — as simply and plainly, with such an absence of mental excitement, without expatiating upon His peculiar knowledge, and even without that dwelling upon details so usual with those who have anything new to impart, as though all were quite natural and self-evident. We see that the sublimest truths are His nature. He is not merely a teacher of truth, but is Himself its source. He can say "I am the Truth." And the feeling with which we listen to His words is, that we are listening to the voice of truth itself. Hence the power which these have at all times exercised over the minds of men.(Prof. Luthardt.) Suppose a geometrician should be drawing lines and figures, and there should come in some silly, ignorant fellow, who, seeing him, should laugh at him, would the artist, think you, leave off his employment because of his derision? Surely not; for he knows that he laughs at him out of his ignorance, as not knowing his art and the grounds thereof.(J. Preston.) And the Jews marvelled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, never having learned We have a great many men who are original in the sense of being originators, within a certain boundary of educated thought. But the originality of Christ is uneducated. That He draws nothing from the stores of learning can be seen at a glance. Indeed, there is nothing in Him that belongs to His age or country — no one opinion, taste, or prejudice. The attempts that have been made to show that He borrowed His sentiments from the Persians and the Eastern forms of religion, or that He had been intimate with the Essence and borrowed from them, or that He must have been acquainted with the schools and religions of Egypt, deriving His doctrine from them — all attempts of the kind have so palpably failed, as not even to require a deliberate answer. If He is simply a man, as we hear, then He is most certainly a new and singular kind of man, never before heard of, as great a miracle as if He were not a man. Whatever He advances is from Himself. Shakespeare, e.g., probably the most creative and original spirit the world has ever produced, and a self-made man, is yet tinged in all His works with human learning. He is the high-priest, we sometimes hear, of human nature. But Christ, understanding human nature so as to address it more skilfully than he, never draws from its historic treasures. Neither does He teach by human methods. He does not speculate about God like a school professor. He does not build up a frame of evidence from below by some constructive process, such as the philosophers delight in; but He simply speaks of God and spiritual things as one who has come out from Him to tell us what He knows. At the same time He never reveals the infirmity so commonly shown by human teachers. When they veer a little from their point or turn their doctrine off by shades of variation to catch the assent of multitudes, He never conforms to an expectation even of His friends. Again, Christ was of no school or party, and never went to any extreme, words could never turn Him to a one-sided view of anything. This distinguishes Him from every other known teacher. He never pushes Himself to any extremity. He is never a radical, never a conservative. And further, while advancing doctrines so far transcending all the deductions of philosophy, and opening mysteries that defy all human powers of explication, He is yet able to set His teachings in a form of simplicity that accommodates all classes of minds. No one of the great writers of antiquity had even propounded, as yet, a doctrine of virtue which the multitude could understand. But Jesus tells them directly, in a manner level to their understandings, what they must do and be to inherit eternal life, and their inmost convictions answer to His words.(H. Bushnell, D. D.) The wisdom of Christ's teaching has proved a hard problem to infidels for 1,800 years. To this day it stands above the efforts of the mightiest and most trained minds.(W. H. Van Doren, D. D.) And Jesus answered them and said, My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me I. ITS CONTENTS.1. Concerning God. (1) (2) (3) (4) 2. Concerning Himself, (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) 3. Concerning man — (1) (2) 4. Concerning salvation — (1) (2) II. ITS DIVINITY. Three sources possible for Christ's teaching. 1. Others. He might have acquired it by education. But this Christ's contemporaries negatived. He had never studied at a rabbinical school .(ver. 15). 2. Himself. He might have evolved it from His own religious consciousness. But this Christ here repudiates. 3. God. This He expressly claimed, and that not merely as prophets had received Divine communications, but in a way that was unique (John 5:19, 20; John 8:28; John 12:49), as one who had been in eternity with God (John 1:1,18; 3:11). III. ITS CREDENTIALS. 1. Its self-verifying character: such as would produce in the mind of every sincere person who desired to do the Divine will a clear conviction of its divinity (ver. 17). 2. Its God-glorifying aim. Had it been human it would have followed the law of all such developments; its Publisher would have had a tendency to glorify Himself in its propagation. The entire absence of this in Christ's case was a phenomenon to which He invited observation. The complete.absorption of the messenger and the message in the Divine glory was proof that both belonged to a different than human category. 3. Its sinless bearer. This follows from the preceding. A messenger whose devotion to God was perfect as Christ's was could not be other than sinless. But if the messenger were sinless there could be no unveracity in His message or in what He said concerning it. Lessons: 1. The marvellous in Christianity. 2. The insight of obedience. 3. The danger of high intellectual endowments. 4. The connection between truth and righteousness. 5. The sinlessness of Jesus an argument for His divinity. (T. Whitelaw, D. D.) 2033 Christ, humanity 2363 Christ, preaching and teaching June 9 Morning July 30 Evening One Saying with Two Meanings The Rock and the Water Fifteenth Day. The Holy Spirit. The Transfiguration: an Emergency Measure. Matthew 16:28-17:1-8. Mark 9:1-8. Luke 9:27-36. On the Words of the Gospel of John vii. 6, Etc. , Where Jesus Said that He was not Going up unto the Feast, and Notwithstanding Went Upon Our Lord's SermonOn the Mount "Let any Man Come. " Author's Preface. Answer to Mr. W's Sixth Objection. Want of Universality in the Knowledge and Reception of Christianity, and of Greater Clearness in the Evidence. Our Historical Scriptures were Attacked by the Early Adversaries of Christianity... Rejection of Christianity. In the Temple at the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus' Brothers Advise Him to Go to Jerusalem. The Story of the Adulteress. How to Know the Will of God In the Last, the Great Day of the Feast' The Journey to Jerusalem - Chronological Arrangement of the Last Part of the Gospel-Narratives - First Incidents by the Way. At the Feast of Tabernacles - First Discourse in the Temple |
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