Whose Teaching Is It?

Halfway through the Feast of Booths, Jesus walked into the temple courts and started teaching in the open (John 7:14). His brothers had wanted a grand entrance. The rulers had been hunting for Him. He showed up on the Father’s schedule, in the Father’s house, and nobody could stop Him (John 7:30). Malachi had promised the Lord would come to His temple without warning, and here He was, teaching in it (Malachi 3:1).

John 7:14-15 — A man with no credentials

The Jewish leaders were amazed, and not in a good way. They wanted to know how this man knew so much when He’d never studied (John 7:15). They didn’t mean He couldn’t read. They meant He’d never sat under a rabbi. He had no school, no teacher’s name to drop and no letters after His name.

That’s always been the world’s first question about a preacher. Where’d he train? Who signed off on him? The same leaders would later look at Peter and John, see two ordinary fishermen talking with total boldness, and realize they’d been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). Even as a boy, He’d left the teachers in this same temple stunned at His understanding (Luke 2:46-47). The crowds noticed that He taught with authority and not like their scribes (Matthew 7:28-29).

They’d have happily filed Him under “self-taught genius.” He doesn’t let them.

John 7:16-18 — The Father’s teaching

Jesus answers that His teaching isn’t His own. It belongs to the One who sent Him (John 7:16).

That’s not modesty. It’s a claim no rabbi ever made. A rabbi passed along what his teacher had passed to him. Jesus says He passes along what the Father gave Him, and only that (John 8:28, 12:49-50, 14:10). His credentials come from Heaven, not from a school in Jerusalem (John 3:31-32).

Then He tells them how a man can know whether that’s true. Whoever wills to do God’s will is going to know whether this teaching is from God or whether Jesus made it up (John 7:17).

Read that carefully. It isn’t a deal where a man works up a willing heart on his own and God pays him back with light. Nobody wills God’s will by nature. Left to himself, a man is hostile to God and couldn’t bow to His law if he tried (Romans 8:7-8). The Father has to draw a man before he’ll come to the Son, and He grants that coming (John 6:44, 65). He gives the new heart, puts His Spirit in it and causes a man to walk in His ways (Ezekiel 36:26-27). He’s the one working in His people, giving both the want-to and the follow-through (Philippians 2:13). So the willing and the knowing come out of the same hand. The man who bows to God’s will finds Christ’s words are true because God bent his will first.

Next He gives them a test anyone could run. A man who speaks on his own authority is after his own glory. The man who works for the glory of the One who sent him can be trusted, and Jesus never once worked for His own (John 7:18). He wasn’t building a following or chasing applause (John 5:41, 8:50). Every word pointed back to the Father.

That closes off one door. Jesus says God is His Father, that He speaks God’s own words, and that He has no falsehood in Him. If that’s a lie, He’s the worst liar who ever lived. But liars seek their own glory, and He never did.

John 7:19-20 — Moses, and a murder plot

Then He turns the charge back on them. Moses gave them the Law, and not one of them keeps it. So why are they trying to kill Him (John 7:19)? They were plotting murder while they defended Moses’ honor (John 5:16, 18). Moses was the very man who’d accuse them, because he wrote about Christ (John 5:45-46). The Law was never a ladder for them to climb. It shuts every mouth and shows every man guilty (Romans 3:19-20) (Galatians 3:10).

The crowd shouts back that He’s got a demon and asks who’s trying to kill Him (John 7:20). Many of them may not have known about the plot. But notice the charge. Later, others will say the same thing and add that He’s out of His mind (John 10:20).

So here are the options in the open. He’s a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. “Great teacher” and “great prophet” aren’t on the list. He’s just told them His teaching isn’t His own, so if He’s only a teacher, He’s lying about where His teaching comes from. Any compliment that stops short of Lord quietly calls Him one of the other two.

John 7:21-23 — A whole man on the Sabbath

Jesus doesn’t argue about the demon. He goes back to the healing at the pool, the one work that had them all up in arms (John 7:21, 5:8-10, 16).

Then He points to their own practice. Moses gave them circumcision, though it really came from the fathers before Moses (John 7:22) (Genesis 17:10-12). The Law set it on the eighth day, and when the eighth day fell on a Sabbath, they circumcised anyway (Leviticus 12:3). No rabbi called that breaking the Sabbath.

So if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath to keep Moses’ law, why are they furious that He made a whole man well on the Sabbath (John 7:23)? Circumcision dealt with one part of the body. He’d restored the entire man, body first, then He’d warned him about his sin (John 5:9, 14). If the smaller work honors the Sabbath, the greater one doesn’t break it. And the One doing the healing owns the day (Mark 2:27-28).

John 7:24 — Judge rightly

He ends with a command. Stop judging by how things look, and judge what’s actually there (John 7:24).

They’d looked at the surface: a mat carried on the Sabbath and a teacher with no rabbi. They missed the substance: a crippled man made whole and the Son of God standing in His Father’s house. God has never been fooled by a surface, and His Messiah wouldn’t rule by one either (1 Samuel 16:7) (Isaiah 11:3-4). His law always demanded judges who weighed the case and not the face (Leviticus 19:15).