Reflective Bible Study

As we continue moving through John’s gospel, our last episode ended with Jesus secretly going up to the feast, alone, without either His disciples or His brothers. Part of the reason for this was because the Jews were openly looking for Jesus in order to arrest Him. However, as we will discover in our passage for this episode, Jesus had a hard time staying out of the spotlight.

Our passage for this episode is found in John’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 14, John tells us that:

¹⁴ When the feast was about half over, Jesus went to the Temple and began to teach. ¹⁵ The people were amazed and said, “This man has never studied in school. How did he learn so much?”

¹⁶ Jesus answered, “The things I teach are not my own, but they come from him who sent me. ¹⁷ If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me. ¹⁸ Those who teach their own ideas are trying to get honor for themselves. But those who try to bring honor to the one who sent them speak the truth, and there is nothing false in them. ¹⁹ Moses gave you the law, but none of you obeys that law. Why are you trying to kill me?”

Pausing briefly, the way Jesus opens His response to the question of where His knowledge came from is powerful. First, Jesus acknowledges that what He is teaching is not His own ideas. Instead, Jesus is teaching ideas from God. However, Jesus then makes an amazing statement. In verse 17, Jesus tells this crowd: “If people choose to do what God wants, they will know that my teaching comes from God and not from me.”

This statement is powerful, and it is a promise we can apply in our own lives and our own world today. If we choose to do what God wants, we will know whether Jesus’ teaching is from God or not. The reverse is also true. If we choose to ignore or reject doing what God wants, we will ultimately discount Jesus, His teaching, and everything about Him.

With that said, how do we know whether we are doing what God really wants?

If this is an open question in your mind, we don’t need to look any farther than a few weeks ago in our podcast episodes, and into the previous chapter in John. Earlier in Jesus’ ministry, while challenging the crowd He fed, Jesus shares the answer to the question about what God really wants. In John, chapter 6, verse 29, Jesus tells the crowd plainly: “The work God wants you to do is this: Believe the One he sent.”

According to Jesus, believing in Him is the clearest way to discover whether His teaching is from God or not. In other words, Jesus invites us to try life His way and when we accept Jesus’ challenge, we will discover personally whether Jesus’ way is best.

This is the best strategy to take, because it is a personal strategy, and it opens the door for God to show up in our lives. The worst thing someone could do is ignore Jesus on the recommendation of someone else who has chosen to ignore Jesus and ultimately miss out on the rewards because they didn’t try Jesus’ way out for themselves!

However, the people, or at least some of those in the crowd, are a little confused at Jesus calling out the plot to kill Him. In verse 20, John tells us that:

²⁰ The people answered, “A demon has come into you. We are not trying to kill you.”

²¹ Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. ²² Moses gave you the law about circumcision. (But really Moses did not give you circumcision; it came from our ancestors.) And yet you circumcise a baby boy on a Sabbath day. ²³ If a baby boy can be circumcised on a Sabbath day to obey the law of Moses, why are you angry at me for healing a person’s whole body on the Sabbath day? ²⁴ Stop judging by the way things look, but judge by what is really right.”

²⁵ Then some of the people who lived in Jerusalem said, “This is the man they are trying to kill. ²⁶ But he is teaching where everyone can see and hear him, and no one is trying to stop him. Maybe the leaders have decided he really is the Christ. ²⁷ But we know where this man is from. Yet when the real Christ comes, no one will know where he comes from.”

²⁸ Jesus, teaching in the Temple, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. But I have not come by my own authority. I was sent by the One who is true, whom you don’t know. ²⁹ But I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”

³⁰ When Jesus said this, they tried to seize him. But no one was able to touch him, because it was not yet the right time. ³¹ But many of the people believed in Jesus. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miracles than this man has done?”

³² The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering these things about Jesus. So the leading priests and the Pharisees sent some Temple guards to arrest him. ³³ Jesus said, “I will be with you a little while longer. Then I will go back to the One who sent me. ³⁴ You will look for me, but you will not find me. And you cannot come where I am.”

³⁵ Some people said to each other, “Where will this man go so we cannot find him? Will he go to the Greek cities where our people live and teach the Greek people there? ³⁶ What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘You cannot come where I am’?”

In this extended time teaching in the temple, I am amazed because Jesus takes one of the groups of people and turns their hesitation into belief. While Jesus shares some challenging things, this group rightly concludes that it would be unlikely for anyone to come afterwards who will do more miracles or be a more positive influence in the world than Jesus was.

While I could share more, the big challenge I see in Jesus’ message is that we should trust Jesus even though there will likely always be unanswered questions. Some of our questions are simply unanswerable, and when we face a question that does not have a good answer, the easy temptation is to doubt because we don’t understand. However, we are called to have faith that every question we have will be answered at the right moment, and it is possible that the right moment for some questions will be when we stand face to face with Jesus after He has returned and brought us home to heaven.

The big thing for us to remember and focus on is doing what God wants us to do, and that is believing the One He sent, and testing Jesus’ teachings out in our own lives to know personally whether what Jesus shared is from God or not. When we have personally walked the path God created us to walk, we’ll discover who Jesus truly is and we’ll get a glimpse of the amazing future God has prepared for us when Jesus returns to bring us home!

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

As I always challenge you to do, intentionally seek God first in your life and choose to believe in Jesus and trust that His sacrifice on the cross is enough to pay the penalty for your sins. Choose to take Jesus at His word and trust that He will give you the answers to your questions when the time is right.

Also, pray and study the Bible for yourself and try God’s way in your own life. Choose to pray and study the Bible for yourself and test God’s truth by applying it into your life in order to know whether Jesus’ way is really the best way to live. I’ve done this in my own life and determined that Jesus’ way is both better today, even with the challenges it brings, and the rewards for following Jesus are better than we could even imagine. This is what I have discovered in my own journey, and I challenge you to take the journey for yourself instead of taking anyone’s word for it.

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 abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

As we’ve moved through this year focusing in on Mark’s gospel, we’ve sped through Jesus’ life and through many of the most significant events so far in Jesus’ ministry. In our passage for this event, Jesus is challenged again because of something His disciples don’t do, and in Jesus’ response, we get the picture He was perhaps a little irritated at these religious leaders, but also that Jesus had a higher opinion of God’s law than these religious leaders.

Let’s read this event and see what we can learn. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 7, and we will read it from the Contemporary English Version. Starting in verse 1, Mark tells us:

¹ Some Pharisees and several teachers of the Law of Moses from Jerusalem came and gathered around Jesus. ² They noticed that some of his disciples ate without first washing their hands.

³ The Pharisees and many other Jewish people obey the teachings of their ancestors. They always wash their hands in the proper way before eating. ⁴ None of them will eat anything they buy in the market until it is washed. They also follow a lot of other teachings, such as washing cups, pitchers, and bowls.

⁵ The Pharisees and teachers asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples obey what our ancestors taught us to do? Why do they eat without washing their hands?”

Before continuing to discover what Jesus says in response to this, I want to draw our attention onto this question being a spiritual question more than a health question. While the laws given through Moses encompass not only spirituality, but health, legalities, and more, at this point in the Jews history, everything was being given a disproportionate level of spiritual significance.

I will be among the first to say that there is likely spiritual significance in more parts of my life and habits that I even begin to realize. However, with that said, some instructions have less to do with spiritual health directly and more to do with physical health. I don’t know if these disciples did not ever wash their hands, or if these disciples didn’t wash their hands in whatever way was spiritually significant in the minds of these legalistic Jews.

However, Jesus’ answer draws our attention not only on His heart, but also onto a pretty significant spiritual truth as well. Continuing in verse 6:

⁶ Jesus replied:

You are nothing but show-offs! The prophet Isaiah was right when he wrote that God had said,

“All of you praise me
    with your words,
but you never really
    think about me.
⁷ It is useless for you
    to worship me,
when you teach rules
    made up by humans.”

⁸ You disobey God’s commands in order to obey what humans have taught. ⁹ You are good at rejecting God’s commands so that you can follow your own teachings! ¹⁰ Didn’t Moses command you to respect your father and mother? Didn’t he tell you to put to death all who curse their parents? ¹¹ But you let people get by without helping their parents when they should. You let them say that what they own has been offered to God. ¹² You won’t let those people help their parents. ¹³ And you ignore God’s commands in order to follow your own teaching. You do a lot of other things that are just as bad.

¹⁴ Jesus called the crowd together again and said, “Pay attention and try to understand what I mean. ^15-16 The food that you put into your mouth doesn’t make you unclean and unfit to worship God. The bad words that come out of your mouth are what make you unclean.”

¹⁷ After Jesus and his disciples had left the crowd and had gone into the house, they asked him what these sayings meant. ¹⁸ He answered, “Don’t you know what I am talking about by now? You surely know that the food you put into your mouth cannot make you unclean. ¹⁹ It doesn’t go into your heart, but into your stomach, and then out of your body.” By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.

²⁰ Then Jesus said:

What comes from your heart is what makes you unclean. ²¹ Out of your heart come evil thoughts, vulgar deeds, stealing, murder, ²² unfaithfulness in marriage, greed, meanness, deceit, indecency, envy, insults, pride, and foolishness. ²³ All of these come from your heart, and they are what make you unfit to worship God.

In this lengthy response to this challenge, Jesus calls out the Pharisees and other religious leaders for placing their own rules above God’s direct instructions. While I’m confident that the religious leaders believed both sets of rules were important, in any place where these rules conflicted, they minimized God’s law in place of their customs. While some of what God has said could be seen as unpopular and potentially illegal in our world today, God didn’t share His laws as optional from an eternal perspective.

However, the biggest portion of Jesus’ response comes in contrasting what makes you fit for worship from what is simply a smart thing to do for your health. However, one phrase in this passage stood out to me as we read it. This phrase is found at the end of verse 19: “By saying this, Jesus meant that all foods were fit to eat.”

Reading this translation makes me think that all foods are equal, but some of the other translations we regularly pull from frame this phrase better in my mind. Both the New American Standard Bible translation and the New International Version emphasize Jesus’ declaration here that all foods are clean. I can understand why these translators may have chosen to frame this idea as being fit to eat, but it might have been better to say that Jesus simply reframes all foods as spiritually clean.

However, Mark’s gospel is attributing a meaning to Jesus message that I don’t see. Perhaps the original language has a better connection, but Jesus is focused more on spiritual cleanness and fitness for worship and how our food doesn’t change our status or our fitness in God’s eyes. I don’t see Jesus telling us that all foods are now permissible to eat, because history, logic, and any reasonable dietician will tell you that different foods have different health benefits. Some foods are simply better than others, and some types of food should be avoided.

Jesus’ message is that our food doesn’t affect God’s response to our worship. Jesus does not hint or state that all things that go into our mouths are equal from a health perspective.

Instead, Jesus emphasizes that what comes out of our mouths comes from our hearts, and what comes out of our mouths makes us unclean. The things that come out of our mouths reveal our hearts. We could also say that the things we share on social media reveal our hearts as well. In today’s era, our “voice” extends to both what we say and what we write and share. What we choose to communicate to others reveals our heart.

God doesn’t view our online lives and our offline lives as different. God sees everything we do and Jesus tells us here that what we do is an extension of our hearts.

After leaving the crowd and entering the house with the disciples, Jesus reemphasizes the truth that our hearts affect how fit we are to worship God. This also strongly suggests that our worship to God might not be accepted based on the state of our heart.

While it is true that our food affects our health, and our health will ultimately affect our life, which includes our ability to worship, our food does not affect the spiritual state of our heart or God’s love for each of us when we come to Him in worship.

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

As I always challenge you to do, continue intentionally seeking God first in your life. Don’t let this passage be a license to ignore what you put into your mouth, but let it be a challenge to be extra aware of what comes out of your mouth, and to be extra aware of what you communicate to others, whether this communication uses your vocal cords, your pen, or even your computer, tablet, or phone. What you say and share with others reveals the state of your heart, and the state of your heart reveals how fit you are to worship God.

Also, continue to pray and study the Bible for yourself. I don’t know of any better way to help clean and restore your heart than through heartfelt prayer, and studying God’s truth in the pages of the Bible. These spiritual habits have given men and women a solid spiritual foundation for centuries, these spiritual habits can strengthen our spiritual lives, and these spiritual habits have the power clean our hearts as well. Don’t simply assume the Bible says something because you heard it from a friend or read it on the internet. Choose to study it out for yourself because if for no other reason than your eternity depends on it!

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 abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!