Flashback Episode — Teaching While Uneducated: John 7:10-24

If you ever wondered whether Jesus was the sort of person to sneak around, the event in this passage could definitely be used as a proof text. Perhaps Jesus didn’t sneak everywhere He went, but it seems that every so often, He chose to travel in a way that did not draw attention to Himself.

It’s possible we could think this was because Jesus wanted to avoid people, but if that were the case, He simply would not have traveled to the event that our passage for this episode focuses on.

For those of you who want a reference, we will be looking at the gospel of John, chapter 7, and we will be reading from the New American Standard Bible translation. Starting in verse 10, John tells us:

¹⁰ But when His brothers had gone up to the feast, then He Himself also went up, not publicly, but as if, in secret. ¹¹ So the Jews were seeking Him at the feast and were saying, “Where is He?”

Pausing our reading briefly, it would seem that Jesus wanted to avoid the Jewish leaders who may have been looking to arrest Him at this time. Continuing in verse 12:

¹² There was much grumbling among the crowds concerning Him; some were saying, “He is a good man”; others were saying, “No, on the contrary, He leads the people astray.” ¹³ Yet no one was speaking openly of Him for fear of the Jews.

¹⁴ But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and began to teach. ¹⁵ The Jews then were astonished, saying, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?” ¹⁶ So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. ¹⁷ If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself. ¹⁸ He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.

In this passage, Jesus shares a pretty profound statement, and it helps us frame both His own ministry, and really the ministry of many of the prophets in the Old Testament.

The verse we ended off at, which is verse 18, records Jesus telling the crowd, “He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory; but He who is seeking the glory of the One who sent Him, He is true, and there is no unrighteousness in Him.”

While Jesus is speaking about Himself in this passage, the way He phrases this statement implies a truth that can be applied to not only Himself, but to all supposed messengers from God throughout the ages.

In the Old Testament, the role of a prophet was not something that many would want. Not only were many of God’s prophets hated and hurt by those they were sent to give messages to, God often asked them to do crazy things with their lives to illustrate a truth He wanted to share with His people. And as a specific example, while it was not one of the craziest things that God ever asked someone to do, we can read about the prophet Jonah trying to run away from his responsibility as a prophet – even though that didn’t work out so well for him.

But the one thing that all God’s messengers had in common was that at their core, they were seeking to give glory and obedience to the One who sent them. Using Jesus’ words, a false prophet seeks His own glory, while a true prophet doesn’t really care about his fame or glory, but instead focuses in on the glory of the One who sent Him.

Jesus touches on this key idea in a very practical way in verse 17 when He says, “If anyone is willing to do [God’s] will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself.”

Obedience is what prompts us to be able to have the experience that can confirm or deny who Jesus really is. There are thousands, if not millions or billions, of people who are content to discredit Jesus from a place of disobedience. While sitting outside of God’s plan, a skeptic has plenty of one-sided evidence when taken at face value to reject God. Only through experientially testing God’s plan out will we be able to know the truth about who Jesus is.

This prompts me to look at the question from the crowd that inspired this statement. In verse 15, we read, “The Jews then were astonished [at Jesus’ teaching], saying, ‘How has this man become learned, having never been educated?’”

Something about this question strikes me as funny. I think it has to do with what is implied behind the question. While on the surface, the question is simply “How did Jesus get to be so intelligent since He was not formally educated?” under the surface, the implied statement is that intelligence is only developed through formal education.

Jesus was educated, but it was through an informal way – which consisted of prayerful personal study, and through what many might call home schooling, as Mary, Jesus’ mom pushed him and taught Him as He was growing up.

Sadly, I see this mentality in today’s culture. While I am not discounting formal education, which I am a product of, or encouraging home-schooling, I see a trend among people that assume degrees means knowledge. Degrees do generally mean that knowledge has been acquired, but degrees are not the only way of acquiring knowledge – and the knowledge behind a degree is highly subjective. Sure, a person passed a set of classes, signifying that they at one point knew the material, but was the material they learned the most up-to-date and practical information? Hopefully, but that is not guaranteed. Also, knowledge is great, but when it is not applied, it is not internalized, and it is eventually forgotten. While I know I learned some advanced level math in school, I don’t remember the importance of sine, cosine, and tangent except to say that they have something to do with angles and the bunch of weird buttons on my scientific calculator.

Knowledge is great. Intelligence is valuable. But when we look at Jesus, we see a bigger truth about our mission. Jesus tells the crowd and us in verse 16, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me.”

Jesus depended on God and the Holy Spirit to teach, train, and speak through Him. He did not depend on His own ability when sharing God’s message. This tells me that if Jesus depended on God’s Spirit for His message and His knowledge, God’s Spirit should be the first place I look to when seeking knowledge that is useful for my life. And part of me wonders what would happen if more of us took this approach in life.

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As I always open these challenges by saying, intentionally place God first in your life, and if you are up for the challenge, intentionally look to God and lean on Him for knowledge in your own life. Look to God for knowledge and allow Him to teach you what He wants you to learn.

Also, as I regularly challenge you to do in one way or another, continue praying and prayerfully studying the Bible for yourself to grow closer to Jesus and allow God to develop your mind. Through Bible study, we can sharpen our mind and we can develop wisdom which can be more practically useful than intelligence in many situations. While knowledge is good, knowledge is easier to acquire than wisdom, while wisdom by many people is considered more valuable. Look to the Bible to learn wisdom!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or give up on where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!