John 7:14-24 Learning from God

John 7:14-24 Jesus begins to teach, which astonished the Jews. He was teaching what the Father had told Him to teach. Jesus makes a very fundamental statement about learning from God. It is a matter of the heart, not the mind. A person who is willing to do the will of the Father will know and understand His teaching. True and righteous teaching can only come from the Father, and only be communicated by someone who seeks His glory, rather than their own. For this reason, the teachers of the law of Moses do not understand what they are teaching. Jesus refers back to the healing He performed in Jerusalem on the Sabbath (John 5:1-9), and presents a simple quandary. They circumcise on the Sabbath if the appointed day for circumcision (the eighth day from birth - see Leviticus 12:3) falls on a Sabbath, but they are angry because He healed a man on the Sabbath. The question is how the heart responds to God's leading in cases where there is an apparent conflict in His direction. The problem is that the teachers' hearts were exactly wrong; they saw a man being made whole on the Sabbath, and instead of rejoicing in is healing, they sought to kill the healer. This indicated that their hearts did not understand or partake in the heart of the Father. And Jesus indicates this is because they were seeking to build their own kingdom, or feather their own nest, by their teaching of the Law of Moses, rather than seeking to build the kingdom of the Father and bring Him glory.

          The challenge to us from this passage is our approach to learning and teaching God's word, and the ways of God. There is a place for academic rigor and accuracy, but that place is subservient to the desire to understand what God is saying to us, individually, so that we can do what He says to do, and live how He says to live. This is from the heart, a desire to seek His glory above all other things. (See Psalm 42:1, for example) If our devotion to the word of God is more intellectual and self-centered than visceral and God-centered, we have inverted priorities and will not truly understand His word.