Precepts

25.  Then some of them from Jerusalem said, “Is this not He Whom they seek to kill?”

Remember, this was the time of the feast, and the vast majority of people in the city of Jerusalem were not natives of the city.  The native Jerusalem-dwellers were there, however, and here they enter into the discussion.  The Lord was not well known in Jerusalem, but finally some of the natives figured out Who this One Who was causing such a stir among the Jews must be.  They realize that He must be this One That their leaders are so eager to kill.  Now perhaps they realize the mistake of the people in ascribing to Him a demon.  Men are ever likely to speak in haste and regret their words afterwards!

26.  “But look!  He speaks boldly, and they say nothing to Him.  Do the rulers know indeed that this is truly the Christ?

The Jerusalemites are astounded that He is speaking boldly and the Jews are doing nothing to Him.  They were so used to the Jews having power and command over every situation that their lack of authority here is astonishing to them.  They can only speculate that the rulers have changed their minds and decided that this Man must truly be the Christ. Read the rest of this entry »

1.  After these things Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him.

Notice again that the “Jews” here are the religious leaders, those who truly desired to kill Him.  The Lord wanted to avoid open conflict with them, and so He returned to Galilee, the northern province of Israel, and stayed out of Judea, the southern province.

2.  Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand.

This verse contains a mistranslation of the name of the feast.  The Greek does not read “skene” or tabernacle, but skenopegia, which means “booth-making.”  Thus, this is a reference to the fact that in this feast they were to build booths and live in them like the children of Israel did when they came out of Egypt (Leviticus 23:42-43.)  This is the only reference to this aspect of the feast in the New Testament.  Notice again that this feast, originally given to Israel by the Lord, is called a feast of the Jews because of the way they had corrupted it. Read the rest of this entry »

I received the following question:

During our study of Numbers 22, we read about Balaam disobeying God. Attempting to ride his donkey where God told him not to go, the Angel blocked his way. He could not see the Angel, but the donkey could. Balaam got mad at the donkey and was hitting her. The Bible says that the Lord opened the donkey’s mouth and spoke to Balaam. Here’s our problem. If my cat turned to me and spoke in clear English that she didn’t want tuna for dinner because that’s what I always gave her and she was tired of it, I’d be saying —-whoa, back the bus up, cat’s don’t communicate by speaking our language!  Why was Balaam not concerned? Instead, he carried on a complete conversation with the donkey and didn’t realize that it was the Lord speaking until he revealed the Angel standing in the way.

Did animals speak in a “language” at one time that is not recorded in the Bible? Or, because they have not sinned against God are they able to communicate differently? We know that the serpent spoke to Eve in the Garden. Was that the “norm” at the time? Or, do they truly communicate with God and we don’t have that closeness anymore?   

Balaam had, throughout the story up until this point, played “fast and loose” with the word of God. Read the rest of this entry »

22.  On the following day, when the people who were standing on the other side of the sea saw that there was no other boat there, except that one which His disciples had entered, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with His disciples, but His disciples had gone away alone–

These were the same people whom the Lord had avoided because they wanted to make Him a king by force (verse 15.)  Now, they are on the eastern shore of the sea, and the Lord has gone to the western shore.  They are looking for Him, no doubt to carry out their purpose of making Him a king, and find that He is not there.  They discover that there was no other boat there except the one the disciples entered.  The Greek word is different from that in verse 17, and indicates the dinghy belonging to a fishing vessel that was used to row out to the bigger boat.  Now that boat is gone along with the disciples, but they realize that Jesus had not gone with the disciples.  How then did He leave and rejoin His disciples?  This is a mystery that they cannot fathom. Read the rest of this entry »

1.  After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

“After these things” means after the first confrontation with the Pharisees given in chapter 5.  The Sea of Galilee is near a city called Tiberias, and thus could also be called by that city’s name.  The Lord crosses this sea to continue His ministry.

2.  Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased.

This multitude followed the Lord across the sea because they had seen Him perform signs on those who were diseased.  We can imagine that a miracle-worker such as the Lord would draw a similarly large crowd today.  Yet some say that the reason God doesn’t work evidential miracles today is because they don’t work to get people to believe in Him!  The evidence of Scripture is entirely in contrast to this.  The miracles did work, and many, many people followed Him because of them.  The same would be equally true in our day.  The reason the Lord does not work such miracles today is because this would not be consistent with His present purpose as outlined in the book of Ephesians, which is to show forth the graciousness inherent in His character (Ephesians 2:7.)  He is calling a group of believers through His grace, a group that not seeing, yet believes (John 20:29.)  Miracles would not help Him in achieving this goal, but rather would hinder it.  That is why He does not work evidential miracles today, not because they do not work.  They do, and they would work marvelously in our day as well. Read the rest of this entry »

19.  Then Jesus answered and said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner.

In the remainder of the chapter we see the Lord’s teaching to the Jews in response to their rejection of Him.  He assures them that what He has done on the Sabbath day is right, for He is only doing what He has seen His Father do before Him.  Although this healing may not have squared with what the Jews thought the law commanded, it was just fine in the eyes of the God Who gave the law in the first place.

20.  “For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel.

From this we see that the Father’s attitude towards the Son is one of love.  This explains for us where love came from.  If God is love, some might argue, how could God have loved before any other being was created?  You cannot love nothing, right?  The answer lies here.  Love has always existed between the Father and the Son.  This was the original love, and all other love comes after it and must be secondary to it. Read the rest of this entry »

1.  After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.

Again, notice that what were once feasts of the Lord are now called feasts of the Jews because of the corruption they had introduced into them.  Which feast this was is uncertain.  The Lord, as any good Israelite would do, went up to Jerusalem for the feast.  This is a proof that we have of the fact that our Lord adhered faithfully to the religion God had given the nation of Israel.  Jesus Christ was not a “Christian.”  He was an Israelite, and He kept faithfully the religion that God wanted all Israelites to keep.  He did not live in our dispensation of grace, and the rules then were far different than they are now.  That the Lord acted consistently with the dispensation in which He was working can be demonstrated by His faithfulness to the law of God.  At that time, all the Israelites were still required to keep the commandments in the law, and so our Lord kept them in every respect. Read the rest of this entry »

19. Then His mother and brothers came to Him, and could not approach Him because of the crowd.

Now Miriam once again comes into the picture, although here she is just called His mother. She is with His brothers. There are those who try to argue that the Lord had no brothers, but rather that He was the only child of Mary. Yet this is just not the case. The Lord had brothers, or rather half-brothers, as we would call them, through Mary and Joseph. Now, His mother and brothers come to Him. Yet they are not able to approach Him because of the crowd that is surrounding Him. This was not an unusual thing, for the Lord was very popular, and was often surrounded by crowds. Read the rest of this entry »

I received the following question:

There was an article in “The Onion” that suggested a contradiction in the Bible. I’m not sure how genuine the article content is, as this publication is supposed to be a satirical one!

Slight Inconsistency Found In Bible
             
STILLWATER, OK–The world’s theological community is in an uproar following Monday’s discovery of a slight inconsistency in the Bible. “I was reading Jeremiah 17:4, in which God says, ‘Ye have kindled a fire in mine anger, which shall burn forever,’” said Pastor Theodore Strait of First Lutheran Church in Stillwater. “And I immediately recalled Jeremiah 3:12, which says, ‘For I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever.’ I thought, how can this possibly be? The Bible, contradicting itself?” Biblical scholars are scrambling to explain the strange paradox, believed to be the first time a passage in the Bible has been found to contain flaws in logic.

In Jeremiah there are indeed these two statements.  The author of this article, though, has failed to take into account the contexts of these statements, a failure which is usually the case in any accusation against the Bible. Read the rest of this entry »

28.  The woman then left her waterpot, went her way into the city, and said to the men,

The woman is so excited that she leaves her waterpot behind and goes into the city to tell others the news.  Certainly those of us who have come to the Lord later in life can sympathize with this, knowing what an excitement and desire to tell others is the result of a newfound faith.

The word “men” here is the plural of anthropos, and thus could just mean “people,” not exclusively “men.”  Knowing what her reputation was, we can well imagine that she had much more access to the men than the women.  Yet she was probably telling everyone she met, which would not be men exclusively as is indicated by the translation here. Read the rest of this entry »