The Word This Week
John 8:1…
The beginning scene of John, chapter 8 is a Bible passage everyone seems to know.
They all know, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”
It always comes across like, “Don’t judge me man…”
The setup for this story is exactly that. It is a setup.
It is the morning after the Feast of Tabernacles. It is easy to imagine all the activity in the streets as people are in the process of disassembling the booths and lean-tos they had constructed for the seven days of the feast, putting away the ingredients of those booths and packing them up for next year, and discarding all the pieces that can’t be used again.
For most people, what had been a very exciting time of looking forward to the events of Tabernacles, especially for the children, had now become a time of looking forward to going back to normal life, and moving out of these ramshackle structures and back into their homes.
There were some, however, who were basking in the afterglow of what had taken place on the last day of the Feast, and what had transpired in that moment of silence as Jesus had cried out into the hushed silence of perhaps 2 or 3 million people assembled on the Temple Mount, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
We can only begin to imagine how that statement resonated in the lives and hearts of those who desired to believe this man was their long-promised Messiah. We know how the religious leaders responded. They wanted to have Jesus arrested. And killed.a
But for the sake of those who desired to cling to those moments – and Jesus knew there would be those who would – Jesus returned to the Temple courts the next morning to teach them. These people were those who were not in a rush to tear down their booths but were in a rush to hear more about this living water. Jesus knew they were there, and so He came to them at the Temple rather than departing for Galilee, His home territory. He must be about His Father’s business.
We don’t know exactly what Jesus was teaching His disciples – we only know the session was rudely interrupted by unrighteous men seeking to prove Jesus unrighteous in the eyes of His students.
To say their attempt backfired would be an understatement.
Pastor Bill
The beginning scene of John, chapter 8 is a Bible passage everyone seems to know.
They all know, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.”
It always comes across like, “Don’t judge me man…”
The setup for this story is exactly that. It is a setup.
It is the morning after the Feast of Tabernacles. It is easy to imagine all the activity in the streets as people are in the process of disassembling the booths and lean-tos they had constructed for the seven days of the feast, putting away the ingredients of those booths and packing them up for next year, and discarding all the pieces that can’t be used again.
For most people, what had been a very exciting time of looking forward to the events of Tabernacles, especially for the children, had now become a time of looking forward to going back to normal life, and moving out of these ramshackle structures and back into their homes.
There were some, however, who were basking in the afterglow of what had taken place on the last day of the Feast, and what had transpired in that moment of silence as Jesus had cried out into the hushed silence of perhaps 2 or 3 million people assembled on the Temple Mount, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
We can only begin to imagine how that statement resonated in the lives and hearts of those who desired to believe this man was their long-promised Messiah. We know how the religious leaders responded. They wanted to have Jesus arrested. And killed.a
But for the sake of those who desired to cling to those moments – and Jesus knew there would be those who would – Jesus returned to the Temple courts the next morning to teach them. These people were those who were not in a rush to tear down their booths but were in a rush to hear more about this living water. Jesus knew they were there, and so He came to them at the Temple rather than departing for Galilee, His home territory. He must be about His Father’s business.
We don’t know exactly what Jesus was teaching His disciples – we only know the session was rudely interrupted by unrighteous men seeking to prove Jesus unrighteous in the eyes of His students.
To say their attempt backfired would be an understatement.
Pastor Bill