John 7:1-24

I realize going to the circus is something that doesn't happen as much as it did maybe when I was growing up, but if you've gone to a circus recently, or if you know the concept, you may have seen trapeze artists. And what they do totally defies everything within our human nature — to be able to swing from one, to let go and to be caught by another. I was watching a video of these people doing it, and they say they've done it hundreds and hundreds of times, but every time they do it, there's something inside of them that makes them revolt against it and tries to hold on to the bar longer than they should. Even if they know the catcher's there, even if they've seen it happen, even if they've studied it, even if they've done it multiple times, there's something within them that wants to still hold on. And that's the strange thing about trust. We can't experience being caught while insisting on holding on. There are some things that we can know from a distance, that we can study, that we can observe and understand what's going on.

But some truths require us to put our full weight on them, which raises our big question this morning: Can I really know something is true without ever putting my weight on it? We make this distinction all the time. We can know a lot about things by observing them and yet not put our full weight on them. You can know that an airplane is safe — you can look at the statistics but still be terrified and not go on one. You can know the surgeon is a great surgeon who's done great things and that the surgery will go well, and still not consent to go under. We, as people, like knowledge when knowledge leads us to a certain level of control. But trust changes our relationship. Trust requires something of us. At some point the question becomes: am I willing to put my weight on this? Am I willing to trust? The same is true with Jesus. You might have grown up around Jesus — you might know all the doctrine, you might know all the stories, you might have opinions about Jesus, you can even believe that he's done remarkable things — and still have not put your weight on him.

Big Question

Can I really know something is true without ever putting my weight on it?

That's our big question, and fortunately the Bible has answers for us. So keep your Bibles open to John chapter 7. As we look at this section of Scripture, we'll see three major movements in this passage: strategy without faith, opinions without encounter, and knowledge without submission.

Outline

1. Strategy Without Faith (John 7:1-9)

2. Opinions Without Encounter (John 7:10-13)

3. Knowledge Without Submission (John 7:14-24)

1. Strategy Without Faith (John 7:1-9)

So let's look at that first section, strategy without faith. Let's set the scene for what's going on here. They're talking about the Feast of Tabernacles, or the Feast of Booths. This is a time where Israel is remembering wandering in the wilderness for 40 years. They would live in tents, and so what they would do is gather in Jerusalem, have a feast, have a festival at the temple, and live around Jerusalem in tents, in booths, in tabernacles, to remember what God had done. This was a famous water-pouring festival to symbolize that God would pour out his Holy Spirit — that becomes relevant later on in this chapter. But there was also a famous lamp-lighting festival, where they remembered God's pillar of fire leading them, his presence leading them throughout the wilderness.

This is the most popular feast in the Jewish calendar. There were seven major festivals throughout the year, and this one drew the most people in. This is the most populated time that Jerusalem would be — all of Israel seemingly would go to one city for this week-long festival. And that's why in verses 4 and 5, Jesus' brothers tell him about this feast and why he needs to go. They tell him he needs to go to this festival and teach openly, teach loudly, to be seen — because they don't believe him. Not that they couldn't believe that he would do miracles — they had seen him do miracles, they had seen him grow up — but they couldn't understand the significance of what they saw. And that should be sobering for us. This shows us that you can be near Christ, that you can be around him, that you can watch him from a distance, and still not know him — not even a distance, watch him up close, and still not know him. John Piper, preaching on this text, said this: one may be convinced Jesus can work wonders and still lack the faith that saves, for miracle-working power is an insufficient basis for saving faith.

Just to see a miracle, just to see God at work, and to know that he can do amazing things is not sufficient. James says just to believe in God — the demons believe in God, and they shudder. What we see in the brothers of Jesus is an unbelief. It's polite, it's actually respectable, it takes a form that isn't outwardly offensive. But John writes this down for us because it is easy for us to justify this kind of rebellion in our own lives. This sounds like reasonable counsel. It sounds like they even care for Jesus, that they just want him to be known better. But it's not — and Jesus has some harsh words for them. So what is their sin? From the outside, the first time reading this, it seems like they just want Jesus to be more well-known. Why would this be a big deal? The sin they've committed is that they simply do not care what the Father thinks of their plan. They don't care whether or not their plan fits in with God's will.

That's why Jesus says in verse 6, my time has not yet come. That word for 'time' really should be translated to something more like 'divine appointment.' It's not just talking about time as we can measure it. It's talking about something that God has ordained — a specific moment in history that God has made, a divine appointment. Jesus's whole itinerary is built and dependent upon the Father. It's regulated by his timing. Look at the other half of what Jesus says: 'For you, any time is right.' Jesus is saying the brothers can come and go, they can do whatever they want, because they are divorced from God's kairos — the Greek word for time here — divorced from his divine timing, his appointments. This shows up elsewhere in Scripture. John 12 says this: 'For they love the glory that comes from man more than the glory that comes from God.' This is the problem with the brothers. They looked at the big crowd and said, 'You should want the glory, you should want these people to be on your side.'

You should want everything that these people can offer you. 'Jesus, in chapter 6 you lost a lot of your followers — it's time to get them back, it's time to seize the moment.' They didn't care whether this was the right time for Jesus, the right time from the Father. The world's applause isn't the scoreboard we think it is. What people think of us is not the accolade, the thing that will be a lasting legacy for us. Jesus could care less about winning people over — his primary goal was doing the will of the Father. His brothers want him to go there to show the world who he is. Jesus would show himself, but not in the way the world wants. He refused to go to this festival and say, 'Hey, I'm your king, I'm the one who's here to save you.' Instead, he would climb up on a cross. He would be humiliated. He would not put on a show that entertains people, but he would become the sacrifice that saves.

People all throughout the gospels get Jesus wrong over and over, and he will continue to be misunderstood as we go through chapter 7. We can't wrap our minds around God, because there's no one side of God that we can pull him to. We can't grab him and pull him to where we think we want him. He refused to perform for the crowd. So watch what he does instead.

2. Opinions Without Encounter (John 7:10-13)

Let's look at this next section — verses 10 through 13, opinions without encounter. Look at verse 10: 'But after his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up, not publicly, but in private.' If we read this, and then read verse 8, it almost sounds like Jesus lied. Verse 8 says: 'You go up to the feast. I am not going up to this feast, for my time has not yet fully come.' Does Jesus lie to his brothers here? Is he just saying something easy to get them off his back?

When Jesus says this, the Greek explains it a lot better. The word in verse 8 that is the hinge for us understanding this is the word 'this.' When Jesus says, 'I'm not going up to this feast,' what he's saying is, 'I'm not doing it in this way. I'm not doing it the way you want me to do this, brothers. I will not go in this way.' His brothers told him to go and to show who he is, to proclaim to the world who he is — but he wouldn't do it that way. Jesus isn't lying. It would be like being invited to a party by your friend, and your friend says, 'I want you to come, I want you to have this grand entrance, I want you to give a speech, I want you to walk in on a red carpet.' Your answer would most likely be, 'No, I'm not doing that. I don't want to do that. I don't need that.' But if you show up to the party later, talk to a couple of people, and then leave, that doesn't mean you lied.

What you said to your friend was, 'I'm not doing this in this way. I'm not going to the party in the way in which you want me to.' The brothers want Jesus to seize the moment after he had just lost a lot of followers — chapter 6 shows us that Jesus said some hard things and some people left. We don't know the motive behind why the brothers say this. We don't know whether they were embarrassed of him, whether they had coworkers teasing them — 'Look at your brother, he's lost all these followers, he says he's going to lead a movement but he's only got twelve people, what kind of Messiah is this?' Maybe they felt bad for him and wanted him to have more followers. We don't know — the text doesn't tell us. What it does tell us is that they think Jesus needs to go where the people are — to strike while the iron's hot, to seize the opportunity, to go while the venue is full of people. In the Greek, it's clear.

Jesus is clear that in his going up, it's not going up in the way they wanted. Jesus then goes quietly. The word 'quietly' here really means maximum discretion — he almost slides in. Jesus must go through a season of being hidden — not because he's ashamed of what he's doing or ashamed of the Father, but because if he goes out publicly right now, verse 2 tells us they're seeking to kill him. And yet this is not the time — this is not the time the Father had laid out for him to be crucified. All of this is dependent on the Father's timing.

Look at verses 11 and 12: 'The Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, "Where is he?" And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, "He is a good man," others said, "No, he is leading people astray."' When he goes to the feast, the Jewish leaders are looking for him — they want to arrest him, they want to end this movement. This is why he could not go in the way his brothers wanted him to go. While he's there, he's hearing this muttering. He is the most discussed person there, and yet the least addressed. The crowds talk all about him — some think he's a good man, some think he's leading people astray — but nobody goes to him. Nobody talks to him. In this muttering, we see a little sliver of the gospel: Jesus would become the Messiah through execution, and the way in which he was executed was on the grounds that he was leading people astray.

What we see in the cross is the one true good man dying for those who had been led astray by sin and death. The crowd tries to judge Jesus, tries to put him on trial, tries to figure him out, tries to talk about who he is. Søren Kierkegaard says this: 'Christ was crucified because he would have nothing to do with the crowd. He wanted to be the truth, which is related to the single individual.' What this means is Jesus is the truth — the truth is a person, one person. He didn't want to do this by committee, or Savior by election, by popular vote. He wouldn't conform to what the crowd wanted him to do, and it frustrated them to the point where they hung him on a cross. The crowd gets Jesus wrong.

What does this look like for us today? There are two postures in the crowd. I think most of us fall on the side of 'Jesus is a good man' — we don't criticize him for leading people astray. Those who saw Jesus as good were probably the same people who saw him do miracles, saw him do amazing things. In our world today, as Christians, that means we can experience God, we can see him move in our lives, we can see that God is good — we can probably all think back to a time we prayed and he came through and answered it. But have we actually come to him? So many of us can talk about Jesus, can talk about our faith, through a kind of secondhand Christianity. Many of us have never had that nearness, that firsthand experience — we've never actually gone to him. We can talk the talk, we can do the right things, we can talk about our faith secondhand, but we've never experienced it firsthand.

Jesus does not merely want us to talk about him. I think we're good at that — it's easy to talk about Jesus without a relationship with him. But Jesus wants more than that. He wants us to go to him, to walk with him. Christian activity is not the same thing as a relationship with Christ himself.

3. Knowledge Without Submission (John 7:14-24)

Jesus continues on in this last section, knowledge without submission. Jesus goes to the temple and starts to teach in the middle of the week, when the fanfare had died down. And the first response to his teaching is critique. Look at verse 15: 'The Jews therefore marveled, saying, "How is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?"' They're not saying Jesus doesn't know how to read and write, or that he's not smart. What they're saying is Jesus never had a formal teacher. In that time, to become a rabbi, a teacher, you would be an apprentice.

You would learn from someone else. They didn't have seminaries or colleges back then — that was the formal process. They're saying his teaching was too good to be from someone who never had this kind of education. So Jesus answers them. Verses 16 and 17: 'Jesus answered them, saying, "My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching is from God, or whether I am speaking on my own authority."' Culturally at that time there were two kinds of rabbis. There were the regular teachers, called the Tannaim, who would often quote other teachers throughout Jewish history to make sure what they taught was sound and true.

There's nothing wrong with those teachers — they were the faithful, everyday preachers, and they did a great job. But then there were the teachers who came around once in a generation, called the teachers with authority — the ones who could give a new, true understanding of Scripture. They would say, 'You may have heard it said this, but I tell you this.' Jesus was one of these teachers with authority, but when he says this, he's saying, 'It isn't my own authority. When I claim these things that are true, when I correct a false interpretation, it's not from my authority. My authority comes from God because I am God. My authority is me. I am the authority.' What Jesus is saying is that you cannot stand on the outside and see whether or not he's true without trusting his words, without walking with him, without submitting to the will of the Father.

If you loved God's will, then you would know this is true. There has to be trust in this. It's like planting corn. If you're planting more than an acre, you can't harvest your corn without first planting it in the ground, without first trusting your salesman that it's going to work. You can know the science behind it, you can understand a new variety of corn, you can even see it in your neighbor's field — but until you purchase it, until you plant it in the ground, you can't cash the check. You can't go and harvest someone else's corn — you have to be the one who plants it. That's what Jesus is saying about himself. You cannot stand on the outside looking in, hoping that you'll understand and just glean some of what Jesus is saying and maybe that'll work.

You can't try Jesus out. That would be like standing in your field while your neighbor's planting and hoping some of the seed comes onto your land — it would be insane. I've heard pastors say, 'If you're unsure, just try Jesus out for ten days and see if you like him — you can return him after that.' That's not how it works. We're not neutral judges. Our hearts are already rigged against us, like a rigged jury. We can't just say, 'I'll weigh this and figure it out — I'll cancel my subscription after the free trial.' You can see all the evidence in the world, but if your heart is set against him, no amount of evidence will change that. There will always be a reason not to believe. That's why I am not huge on apologetics — I think there's a place for them, I think they can be helpful, but I do not think the best thing for me to do every Sunday is try to convince you with facts from science that Jesus is real or that God is real.

Because a heart turned against him will always find a reason not to believe. This was never a knowledge problem for the crowd, for the Jewish leaders — it was a want-to problem. Are we willing to accept it? Are you willing to trust Jesus? This passage is not saying we get to pick God, that we get to come to him if we only believe enough — John chapter 6 has led us here, and it's clear that God is the one who chooses. This is talking about the human side of salvation: if anyone is willing to do God's will, they will see where this teaching comes from. Then Jesus presses this in even harder for the Pharisees. Look at verse 19: 'Has not Moses given you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill me?' Jesus is talking to the professional law-keepers, the ones whose job it was not only to know the law but to keep it.

They loved the law, they had memorized it — probably the first five books of the Bible by heart. They knew all the rules and all the rules about the rules, and yet they weren't willing to keep the law. It would be like a pharmacist who develops a new drug, spends years developing it, and at the end is unwilling to take it. One of their laws was not to murder, and yet they seek to murder Jesus. The experts of the law are, at this very moment, refusing to keep it — which is precisely why they cannot recognize the truth standing right in front of them. Then Jesus talks about circumcision. To them, circumcision was one of the first commandments — commanded in Genesis, which predates Exodus, where we find the Ten Commandments. So to them, this was a more important law, one that took precedent over the others.

And so if someone needed to be circumcised on the Sabbath, they would break their own Sabbath rules to do it. This is why Jesus says what he says — you break the Sabbath law to make just a part of someone whole, to make them conform to what God has said, and you'll do that for one part. 'You want to murder me because I made a whole man well. You break the law for a small part, and yet I heal the whole person, and you're ready to crucify me for it.' This wasn't about being right — it was about how they perceived right and wrong. And that's the whole chapter, stacked three times over: the brothers try to manage Jesus strategically — advise him, position him, get him back on top — but never ask what the Father wants. The crowd talks about Jesus, secretly or socially, and argues for him or against him.

They form an opinion, they pick sides, but they never once go to him. The Pharisees study Jesus intellectually — they quote the law, they come up with clever arguments, they demand credentials — but they will not submit to God nor his law. Three different postures, and yet it's that same identical heart: to relate to Jesus from a safe distance, to reserve the right to judge him and rule over him from out there. But that's not what's on the table. That's not how God operates. And that leads us into our main idea: you don't get to judge Jesus, you get to submit, and then you see.

So what is John showing us in all of this? All three of these groups make the same mistake — they put themselves in a position to judge over Jesus. They decide what Jesus should do, what Jesus must prove, whether or not Jesus is believable enough. And yet Jesus refuses all of their arrangements, because Jesus is not another idea that they could just try on.

He's not a product we try out to see if it improves our lives. He's not a candidate trying to win your vote — he is the Son of God, sent by the Father to save the world. So the question for us is: will I bow down to his standards? Will I submit to his will, or will I hold on to my own understanding? That's the main idea for this passage: you don't get to judge Jesus, you get to submit, then you see. The Jesus who demands your surrender is the same Jesus who surrenders himself for you. He will not go to Jerusalem the way the brothers wanted, on the brothers' timetable — but he will go in the way the Father had sent him. And when his final hour came, he did not climb onto a stage with a crowd to impress. He climbed onto a tree to take your place.

Jesus is not asking you to put your weight on someone who has not earned it, who hasn't displayed it. Jesus is asking you to put your trust in him, because he has already proven that he is more than trustworthy, and that he is willing to lay his life down for you.

If this is true, this changes how we live, how we respond, everything about us. And there are two ways this changes us — our application. First: do not soften your convictions to win people. This isn't primarily a spiritual failure — softening your convictions on anything is a bad move relationally. When you edit what you actually believe down to what people will tolerate, that's not being kind — what you're doing is lying. You're handing someone a curated, false version of yourself and calling it honesty, and it puts a barrier in your relationship from the start. Think about where you actually do this — maybe in a small group, in conversations with coworkers, at a family gathering. Every one of those moments has the same trade: you're giving up truth, letting it take a backseat to the opinions of the people in front of you. What's actually happening underneath is that you're managing a verdict — trying to make sure the people in the room still favor you, still like you.

But the truth is the verdict isn't theirs to give. You don't get to negotiate your convictions down to whatever keeps you most liked. You get to tell the truth and let them decide what they think of you. Every time you edit yourself for the audience in front of you, you're telling God that his opinion of you isn't enough, but theirs is. Second application: do not play Christian. It's far easier to pretend to be a Christian than to actually live it out. We can master the things that culturally seem Christian — sing the right songs, say the right things, make the right faces when it's time to pray. We can build a completely convincing performance and never break character. But the question is, what do you do when you're all alone, when there's no one else to impress — is Christ still beautiful to you? Is he still someone you desire to be with?

A good diagnostic for this is: when do you pray? Is your prayer life mostly confined to being in front of people, where others can see? Or is it alone — where you're not managing how you come across, not rehearsing how someone else will perceive you, just you, honest, unobserved? Maybe that's the challenge this week: seek those quiet moments, and reflect on whether this has been a performance — because the fix is not a better performance. The fix is dropping the act and coming to Christ authentically, because he was never grading you on how convincing you were. The beauty of this passage is that it's for all kinds of people — 'if anyone is willing to do God's will.' There isn't a class of people who are qualified or disqualified from coming to saving faith. The humblest, submitted heart can know what the proud expert misses. The door is open to anyone, and the grace to walk through it is given by God.

What we see in this passage is Jesus being judged for his appearance, judged on what he has done and what he says. They see this unlearned man from a place in Israel nobody thought anything good was going to come from. The beauty of the gospel that they missed is that they're judging the Judge. And this would not be the last time Jesus would be falsely judged. About a year later, he would submit to a totally erroneous judgment — a kangaroo court held by the Jews, and then a judgment under Pilate — to be crucified. And on the cross, Jesus would be judged again, not by his own deeds, but by ours. Jesus would trade places with us and submit to the Father's judgment that should have fallen on us — his righteous judgment that should have fallen against us — he took willingly.

We must believe this and submit to this, because that wasn't the last time Jesus would interact with judgment. One day, Jesus will come to judge the living and the dead — we say that before we take communion, we say it in the Apostles' Creed. There will be a day we stand before him. He let the world judge him falsely so the Father could judge him rightly in our place. The only question left is whether you will meet him now as Savior, or later as judge. You don't get to judge Jesus — you get to submit. Submit to his will, submit to his life, submit to his love, submit your life to his — and then you will see.