The Law (John 7:49-52)

 The Law
John 7:49–52 (ESV): 

But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.” 

50 Nicodemus, who had gone to him before, and who was one of them, said to them, 

51 “Does our law judge a man without first giving him a hearing and learning what he does?” 

52 They replied, “Are you from Galilee too? Search and see that no prophet arises from Galilee.” 

So from this text from this weeks passage, we see the word law used twice. It is used as in two ways if not three without specifically saying the word law again, but suggesting it when saying “Search and see”. The leaders in this text are kind of weaponizing the scripture to defeat anyone who question their understanding of it.

We can see the people they call the crowd trying to understand the scripture and being confused based on what their leaders have told them. The leaders defense is to basically say the crowd is dumb and can’t understand all that is going on. 

When Nicodemus not caught up with anger about Jesus’ actions and still having a clear head about him uses the law in the way it should be used to direct them to carefully hear and understand what and why a person is doing what they are doing they point the same conclusions of the law they had incorrectly concluded at him with the intention of silencing him.

What we can learn here is sometimes coming to the truth of what scripture actually says puts us in a position where we may have to surrender our long term held wrong beliefs at times. We can’t ever think we have it all figured out. Nicodemus demonstrates that here. In John 3, we see him coming to ask questions of Jesus and he is willing to listen even when what Jesus says is hard to understand and to accept. It is a bit ironic that Nicodemus is the one they challenged to “search the scriptures” because he is the only leader that is recorded in scripture to doing that. You can probably safely bet that he did do just that “search the scriptures”. That could be why we see him involved in making sure Jesus is buried properly after His death. 

John 7:19 (ESV): Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?”

Going back up to our 1 part of our John 7 study we see Jesus addressing the law with the leaders here. He first will tell them they don’t keep it and next He will tell them they don’t understand it.

The law of Moses says “Thou shalt not Murder” so if they desire to kill Him they are breaking the law of Moses and refusing to keep it. Jesus later adds to that saying if one is angry with his brother he is guilty in his heart of murder. So in this dialogue if they are guilty of anger or murder desires they are breaking the law of Moses.

John 7:23 (ESV): If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision, so that the law of Moses may not be broken, are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well?

Here is their second error of not truly understanding the law. Jesus calls them to consider if the setting a child apart for God is so important, you do it on the Sabbath, how is restoring an adult person completely not something important enough to do on the Sabbath? The primary directive of the Sabbath was to not do any “ordinary work” on it. If setting a child apart for God is not “ordinary work” then why is restoring and redeeming a adult considered “ordinary work” that should be prohibited?

John 5:39–40 (ESV): You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.

They refused to come to Him in one way because they could not see that the Scriptures were talking about Him and how He could give them eternal life. They did search the scriptures and took much of them literal, but they never seen or understood them through the veil removed by Christ. They could physically read and understand, but they could not spiritual see or understand the gravity of the words of scripture.

John 5:46–47 (ESV): For if you believed Moses, you would believe me; for he wrote of me. 47 But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe my words?” 

Ok, I hope this generates some thoughtful consideration and some perspective that is helpful. Hope you all have a great day. Look forward to seeing you next time we can get together.