In His Service

       Judge Correctly John 7:14-24 The Scriptures are chalk-full of advice to heed concerning judging. Jesus in wisdom has now been at the feast for three days, and he uses the wisdom and truth from God to answer the Jewish people and leaders. Let’s look at the beginning of the text.   “Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?” Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him.” Jesus is approaching the later half of the festival. Each day the priests would begin with the water drawing ritual...

                                                              What’s behind Hatred? John 7:1-13   Jesus was facing a leadership whose hatred of him because of the work of God and the exposing of their works of evil was growing daily. They were trying to kill him at worst or silence him at the least by keeping him from Jerusalem and the populace of Israel. Let’s begin to look at the text, “After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him. But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show ...

                           “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” John 6:60-71 Jesus in obedience to the Father, and in compassion for the lost spoke in truth and honesty the words and the will of the Father, “ All those the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never drive away… And this is the will of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all those he has given me, but raise them up at the last day… “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.” V.37, 39, 44-45  Recapping, the disciples and all the 5,000 plus followers had tasted the bread on the knolls of Bethsaida, and Jesus said to them, “I am the Bread of Life”, if they partake of this bread that they would never hung...