WWUTT 870 If Anyone's Will is to do God's Will?

Jesus said, 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 of my own authority, when we understand the text.

You're listening to When We Understand The Text, committed to sound teaching of the Word of God. For questions and comments, email

WhenWeUnderstandTheText at gmail .com. And don't forget our website, www .tt

.com. Here's our host, Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. Hey, if you tuned into the podcast today, hoping to hear

Q &A, which is what we usually do on Friday, responding to questions from listeners, we actually did the

Q &A on Monday and Tuesday of this week. Things got moved around a little bit because returning from the

G3 conference, we didn't get home until Monday night. The weather had us on the road longer than we expected.

I didn't have any podcasts recorded for Monday. So what we decided to do was take the

Q &A that Becky and I did while we were on the road and we split it into two parts. And that was

Monday and Tuesday this week. So you actually got a double dose of Q &A, but you have to go back to Monday and Tuesday's episodes to listen to it if you haven't if you haven't caught it yet.

I'm going to be back in John 7 again today and then next week we'll return back to our regular schedule.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be a study in our

New Testament book, which will still be in John 7. And then Thursday will be the

Old Testament study in the book of Job. And God willing, on Friday, we'll come back to another

Q &A. And you can always submit your questions to when we understand the text at gmail .com.

Continuing our study of John 7, I'll begin reading in verse 10 through verse 24. But after Jesus' brothers had gone up to the feast, then

Jesus also went up, not publicly, but in private. 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 the people astray.

Yet for fear of the Jews, no one spoke openly of him. About the middle of the feast,

Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. The Jews therefore marveled, saying, how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?

So Jesus answered them, 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.

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory, but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?

The crowd answered, you have a demon. Who is seeking to kill you? Jesus answered them,

I did one work, and you all marveled at it. Moses gave you circumcision, not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers, and you circumcise a man on the

Sabbath. If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the

Sabbath I made a man's whole body well? Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.

This is right after Jesus' conversation with his brothers, which we read in verses 1 -9, his brothers who did not believe he was who he said he was, and so they were kind of egging him on to go to Jerusalem and perform some sort of sign or wonder.

You want to have this public ministry? Well that's where you need to go do it then. Show us a sign that we may know that you're really from heaven like you say that you are.

Jesus said to them that his time had not yet come, meaning that it wasn't yet time for him to be arrested and crucified.

So he told his brothers, you go because they can't hate you. They hate me because I testify that their works are evil.

As he said in verse 7, you go up to the feast. I'm not going up to this feast for my time has not yet fully come.

So his brothers went, Jesus remained in Galilee, and then we get to verse 10 where it says, but after his brothers had gone up to the feast, and by the way, anytime anyone was going to Jerusalem, it was always up.

Galilee is north of Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is higher in elevation. So that's why you will see anywhere in the gospels when somebody is going to Jerusalem with Jesus and his disciples are going there.

They're always going up to Jerusalem, the Temple Mount, Mount Moriah, which is where the temple was.

It was, of course, higher than the rest of that area. So that's why everybody's always going up to Jerusalem.

Jesus brothers went up to the feast, and later on, Jesus also went to the feast after his brothers had gone up.

Then he also went up, not publicly, but privately. He wasn't making a spectacle of it.

He wasn't trying to draw attention to himself, but he just kind of blended in with the crowd when he got there.

And of course, eventually he does go up to the temple and start teaching, and then everybody knows who he is at that point.

Oh, look, he's here. Here he is. He's teaching in front of us. Now, as I mentioned yesterday,

Jesus said to his brothers that he wasn't going to go up, and then he eventually does go up, and he goes privately, but then it's publicly.

And so there may be some who will say, we'll see Jesus was being dishonest here. He told his brothers that he wasn't going to go up, but then he did end up going to the feast.

And as I said yesterday, in the Greek, this is better understood. It just doesn't translate as well in English.

But it's Jesus saying to his brothers that he's not going to go up as though to say to them, he's not going to go in the manner in which they want him to go.

He's going to do things according to the father's will, not according to what other people tell him to do.

So therefore, in response to that, in response to the way that his brothers were egging him on because of their doubt, he did not go by their insistence, but waited until they went.

And then he went himself and he came in privately at first because, again, he's not trying to draw a lot of attention to himself lest he get arrested and put to death.

That's what the Jews want to do with him. As we read in chapter five, because Jesus said he was from the father, that meant that he was equal with the father.

And that's exactly the way the teachers of the law received those statements that Jesus made and the Pharisees and otherwise.

And so they wanted to put him to death for blasphemy. It was not yet time for those things to come to pass.

And so Jesus didn't want to make himself too public. Instead, he kind of goes privately up to the temple and begins to teach.

But not everybody knows that he's there. Just the people that were there in the temple. So in verse 10, again, after this, his brothers had gone up to the feast, then he also went up not publicly, but private.

And the Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, now, whenever we see the

Jews in the Gospel of John, we have to be mindful of the context, because sometimes the

Jews, he may just be meaning the teachers of the law, which would also include the

Pharisees. But more often than not, he's meaning all Judeans, everyone who lived in Judah.

And that also included the teachers and the Pharisees. When we're talking about a feast, especially like the

Feast of Booths, some of these major feasts would not just draw people from Judea and Jerusalem, but even from outer regions, other

Jews that lived in areas beyond Judea because of the dispersion. So they would come back to Jerusalem specifically for these feasts.

I think this is illustrated a little bit better for us in the book of Acts, because you have at Pentecost the people who come back to Jerusalem for this particular feast, 50 days after Passover, and they're speaking all different kinds of languages because they're dispersed throughout the

Roman Empire. And so they speak the languages of those lands that they had been dispersed into.

And then coming back to Jerusalem for specific feasts, you had so many people there that did not just speak

Hebrew, but they spoke a lot of other languages and some not as versed in Hebrew, but instead understood the language of the territory from which they came.

That is why when the disciples were anointed with the Holy Spirit, they're speaking in multiple languages.

And Acts 2 even tells us which languages they were speaking. Every person heard the gospel spoken to them in their own language and by men who were not educated.

It would have been recognized that these men are not educated men who would know all of these different languages.

And so it was a miraculous display of the Holy Spirit right there in their midst.

And again, all the different people and the different languages that they spoke at this Jewish feast because of all the

Jews that had been dispersed to various regions in the Roman Empire. And so in this particular case, when we have a reference to the

Jews, we're talking about those who are from Judea, and then we have a reference to the people.

So the Jews were looking for him at the feast and saying, where is he? Because this is the area in which

Jesus is most recognized. But then there was much muttering about him among the people.

So the people would include the Galileans and also people from other outlying areas that would have come back to Jerusalem specifically for this feast.

The Judeans, especially under the influence of the Pharisees, wanted to put Jesus to death.

But that wasn't necessarily the attitude of other Hebrews outside the region of Judea.

So there's other people there that are muttering about Jesus, saying he is a good man.

So there are some people that are fans. But then there are some other people there that are going, no, he's leading the people astray.

This is not a good man. What you see, yeah, you might like it. You might want to go to see the miracles, and you might go to hear the teaching.

But the teaching is actually leading people astray. And these were people who were on the side of the Pharisees. We often think of the

Pharisees as guys who are wearing black hats, right? So everybody else is dressed in white. The Pharisees are the bad guys, dressed in black.

And along comes Jesus, the new sheriff in town, who is coming in to clean up this place, and he's going to take care of those bad guys.

And that's the way that we kind of see the exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees and the people.

The people are all kind of like, hey, finally, somebody who's going to deal with these guys. No, the people loved the

Pharisees because the Pharisees taught them how to have eternal life. And the

Pharisees also came from among the people. The Sadducees were from the upper echelon of society.

But the Pharisees were your average Joes, just like everybody else. They lived among the people, though they sat in the highest seats in the synagogue.

And so the people of Judea loved the Pharisees. So if anybody said anything about Jesus that would have upset the

Pharisees, well, the people didn't want to say that out loud because any of the other Judeans would have told the

Pharisees and the teachers of the law, and maybe they would have gotten in trouble as well. So in verse 12, again, it says 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.

They kind of said these things just quietly amongst one another. And then verse 13 says, yet for fear of the

Jews, no one spoke openly of him. No one really wanted the drama. They did not want to cause a scene, and they certainly didn't want to get caught up in it and have to testify in front of the synagogue or something of that kind.

So this was just muttering among the people that was not meant to be overheard by Judeans and certainly not meant to end up disrupting this feast.

In verse 14, about the middle of the feast, Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching.

So he's not performing miracles. He's not doing this in front of everybody so that he's drawing attention to himself, but he just goes up to the temple and those people there in the temple is who

Jesus begins to teach. Now, there's still a lot of people there, because, again, this was a big festival going on in Jerusalem.

The Jews therefore marveled, saying, how is it that this man has learning when he has never studied?

So like I said, the apostles are speaking in tongues in Acts chapter two at Pentecost, and the people recognize these are uneducated men.

They should not be able to speak in tongues like this. Yet here they are speaking in our language, and we can hear what it is that they are saying and understand it.

This was a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit, and the people would have recognized this. Once again, this is why speaking in tongues is not some private prayer language.

That's not the way the Holy Spirit manifests that. This is meant to be a testimonial sign, and it's always for the benefit of somebody else.

That's what the spiritual gifts are for, for building up the church. So the people recognize that when the apostles were speaking in tongues, that they were doing something out of the ordinary, something supernatural was taking place.

And here Jesus in the temple, even his teaching is recognized by the people here as being something otherly, something that's not ordinary, because Jesus, this ordinary guy, this carpenter from Galilee, from Nazareth, here he is speaking things that are too lofty for us to understand, and yet this is not a man of great learning.

He didn't spend every day in the temple or in the synagogue hearing the word preached and studying these things himself so that he might aspire to be some kind of rabbi that would be teaching others.

Jesus is only about 30, 31 years old at this particular time, and so the people are recognizing that this man does not have such an education.

So how is it that he has such learning? In verse 16, Jesus answered them, my teaching is not mine, but his who sent me.

This is his answer to their question. How is it that this man has such learning? And Jesus' response is, it's because of where I come from.

I come from heaven. As he talked about in the previous chapter, I have been sent by the father. And so this teaching that I give to you has been given to me by God.

Verse 17, 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 his own, or I'm sorry, on my own authority.

So let me come back to that again. If anyone's will is to do God's will.

In Matthew 7, 21, we read, not everyone who says to me, this is Jesus speaking, of course, this is the

Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 7, 21, Jesus said, not everyone who says to me,

Lord, Lord, will enter the kingdom of heaven. But the one who does the will of my father, who is in heaven.

And notice that Jesus says that on that day, on the day of judgment, people are going to come to him saying,

Lord, Lord, that means that means they're going to be emphatic. They're going to be passionate about it.

They're going to call out his name and not just say, Lord, as though they're just addressing somebody. But Lord, Lord, did we not do all these mighty things in your name?

So verse 22, Jesus says, on that day, many will say to me, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name and cast out demons in your name and do many mighty works in your name?

And this is this is Jesus saying that these people are they're not just going to be pleading for their lives, realizing, hey, we're about to die.

We better do something. Let's make something up. These are people who are going to they're going to think that in their lives, they were actually doing stuff for Jesus.

It was all for you, right? And wasn't it amazing? Didn't we do amazing things for you?

All these mighty works in your name, and then Jesus will declare to them,

I never knew you depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

So who is it that is going to receive the kingdom of God? It is going to be the one who does the will of my father who is in heaven.

That was Matthew 721. And here at the Feast of Booths in John 7,

Jesus says, John 7, 17, 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.

Remember, and I mentioned this yesterday, Jesus authority was not from himself, but it was from God.

He set his rightful claim as God aside, and he took on human flesh and dwelt among us.

And he became like his brothers in every respect, as it says in the book of Hebrews. So Jesus experienced everything in human in his humanity that we have experienced.

He was not lacking any of these things. It wasn't like he held on to just enough divinity that he could he didn't have to feel certain things.

He didn't have to feel pain. He didn't have to feel hunger on the cross. He just kind of left his body, you know, hey,

I can I can now be my God self. And I don't have to be my human self and feel some of the stuff that I'm going through right now.

Jesus was fully man. He was very man. He was human in every way.

He experienced everything as a human. He did not cling so much to his divinity that he did not have to experience certain human things.

Why would God put himself through that? Well, he did it for our benefit. He did it for the glory of God, to the praise of his glorious grace.

And he did it for our sake. And again, as I quoted yesterday, Second Corinthians 521, for our sake,

God made him to be sin who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.

So Jesus does what he does in submission to the father's will. And he submits perfectly to the father's will, whereas we cannot accomplish that.

We are incapable of that. But now we are in the will of God because we have been given the righteousness of Christ, everybody who is a follower of Jesus.

And that's what Jesus is trying to tell to the people here. 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.

There are a lot of people that can read the Bible but not come away from it seeing a message of salvation.

It is only those who desire to do God's will that will see in the

Bible. The word of Christ is the way of salvation. And by listening to his word, believing his word, and obeying his word, do we show confirmation that we have hearts that desire the will of God.

And this desire that is in our hearts comes from God. It has been given to us by God. As the

Lord said through the prophet Ezekiel, I will take your heart of stone and I will give you a softened heart and I will sprinkle clean water on you and clean you from all your uncleannesses and I will cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.

So if one desires the will of God, it is because this comes from God and not of the will of man.

If anyone's will is to do God's will, he will know whether the teaching that I teach is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority.

Now, of course, Jesus could speak on his own authority. He is Lord. But in nothing that Jesus did was in contradiction with the will of the father or even the will of the

Holy Spirit. God is one father, son, Holy Spirit, one

God, three persons, but without division in nature, essence or being.

The will of the father is also the will of the son and the will and the word of the son is likewise the word of the father.

So when we read the words of Jesus, we are reading the word of God. Let's conclude with prayer.

Our wonderful heavenly father, we thank you for the gift of your word that we may read it and come to understand who you are, though it is but a glimpse of who you are.

It is a glimpse that is so wonderful and so glorious that we will be pondering it for the rest of our lives as Christians in this world, as long as we are in these bodies and we can open up your word and read it.

We will be pondering the things of God and we might read the Bible a thousand times and still never even come to the tip of who you are.

So we thank you for this little bit that you have shown to us through your word and may we cherish it and continue to grow in it and be shaped in the image of Christ.

Lead us in righteousness today and help us to take the things, the opportunities, the occasions that happen to us today, to submit them to you and give glory to you in all things.

Help us to forgive others just as we have been forgiven much so we might walk in your grace and extend that same grace to those who need it.

And we pray these things in Jesus' name, Amen. This is When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes.

There are lots of great Bible teaching programs on the web and we thank you for selecting ours. But this is no replacement for regular fellowship with a church family.

Find a good, Gospel -teaching, Christ -centered church to worship with this weekend and join us again