John 5:39-47

39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you possess eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.

41 "I do not accept glory from human beings, 42 but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts. 43 I have come in my Father's name, and you do not accept me; but if someone else comes in his own name, you will accept him. 44 How can you believe since you accept glory from one another but do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?

45 "But do not think I will accuse you before the Father. Your accuser is Moses, on whom your hopes are set. 46 If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me. 47 But since you do not believe what he wrote, how are you going to believe what I say?"



Dig Deeper

My first several years coaching high school basketball were always a bit challenging. The main challenge for us to be competitive was that we simply didn't have the kind of talent that the other teams in our conference had. We were always shorter, slower, and less physically talented than the other teams we were playing. Because of this, I developed a coaching style that caused our team to be very physical, focus on defense, and really try to slow the game down. We did this well and we were never a great team but we were always difficult to play, difficult to score on, and always had the potential to upset anyone on any given night. A few years later, though, we suddenly had some incredibly talented players. In fact, we may have had the most talented and deep team in the league. We started winning games, but not as many as our talent might dictate. We started the season winning four games but losing three. This would have been great for the previous teams, but not this one. We were simply too talented. At halftime of our eighth game, it took one of my players to make me realize what the problem was. He told me that the slow-down style and rugged physical defense that I had always coached simply didn't work for the players we had. He was right. I had forced them to play my system rather than adjusting my system to the players I had. My preconceived notions of how we should play limited us from playing as well as we should have. At that moment we changed everything. We opened the game up and let the players use their athletic ability to make it a fast-paced game. We went from a four-point lead to a forty-point win and we did not lose another game during the regular season of that year.

The Jews of Jesus' day were well known for their commitment to studying the Scriptures. They had built the whole life of their country, in many ways, around it. They took the study of the Torah very seriously and had very rigid systems in place for how it should be studied and lived out. Yet, they had also created a very rigid system of how those same Scriptures were to be read and understood. So much so that they had a religious system that was just exactly the way they liked it and they shaped God to fit their system. Rather than seeking the way of God and then adjusting their own beliefs and practices according to His will, they worked out their own patterns and system of religious observance and the tried to fit God into that. The result was not just that they kept God from realizing His full potential the way I had with my basketball team. The result was that they missed God altogether.

There is an old saying that talks about not being able to see the forest through the trees. The point of that saying is something along the lines of it being possible to so focus on details that we forget or fail to see the larger truth or point. The Jewish leaders of Jesus' time pored over every possible detail of the Scriptures. They knew them inside and out. They knew every little detail and they were quite good at filling in all of the blanks where Scripture might have left some things up to interpretation. They certainly, above all else, knew who wasn't following Scriptures to the jot and tittle. They were, we must understand though, quite serious and sincere about all of this. But the problem was that they lost sight in most respects as to who this was all about.

Human beings are more than capable of getting obsessed with the wrong things, and this was certainly the case with the Jewish leaders that Jesus was so apt to criticize. They had lost sight of the fact that all of this study of Scripture should have been about God and seeking out His will. Instead it had become all about themselves. They became far more interested in impressing one another and being important than they were in genuinely finding God's will in the Scriptures. They quickly became fare more interested in reading the Scriptures like a rule book and setting themselves up as the rule keepers rather taking part in God's plan to reconcile His creation back to himself. This is exactly the problem that God, through the prophet Hosea, pointed out to the Israel of Hosea's day, when he declared that He desired "mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings" (Hos. 6:6). In other words, God wanted a people that care about the letter of the law but not to the point of ignoring the spirit.

The Jewish leaders studied the Scriptures diligently, believing that the study and knowledge of Scripture itself was what would set them apart as people who would gain the life of the age to come. Yet, they missed the larger whole, because the study of Scriptures does not get us anywhere if we do not apply and embrace the heart and action of the Scripture. This is why James declared, "Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says" (James 1:22). The charge that Jesus is leveling is that they have held so woodenly to the letter of the Scriptures that they have absolutely missed what the Scriptures were all about. If they had been more concerned with fitting themselves to God's agenda rather than fitting Him inside of theirs, they would have realized that all the Scriptures of the Old testament were pointing to the Messiah. They were all about Jesus.

This should all stand as a stern warning for us who can so easily fall prey to the same thing. Certainly doctrine is important, but doctrine that is not stressed for its own ends. It is easy to get so obsessed with the letter of New Testament doctrines and Scriptures that we can lose sight of the overall intention. We cannot become so focused on individual convictions and doctrines that we do damage to the overall heart of the New Testament which is forming a community that teaches the world how to live in a state of reconciliation with God. The Scriptures are always about Jesus brining life to a dead world not about excluding people who fail to meet every rule and standard. This is not to say that we just throw out doctrine or the things that the Scriptures say. It means that we must find a balance between studying the Scriptures diligently and living them out in the real world. We must never lose the heart or the spirit of the Scriptures because we are holding so tightly to the letter of the law.

These leaders in fact, claimed Jesus, were so enamored with following rules and excluding those that didn't that this was evidence that they did not really have the love of God in their hearts. They might assert that Jesus is claiming that they have missed the heart of the Scriptures, though, because it is in his own self-interest to do so. Jesus anticipates that and says that this is not the case. He has come in His Father's name, which meant his way of life and in His authority. They failed to see that, though, because they would rather fit God into their box rather than fitting themselves into His. Because of this, they do not accept him. Why? Because they do not truly want to fulfill God's agenda. God's agenda is often uncomfortable for the most religious among us, because He shows such grace and mercy to the unlovable. They far prefer false prophets who come in their own name because those types came from their world and appealed to the things that appealed to them. Jesus, on the other hand has come from heaven and speaks the things of heaven. They fell into the classic danger of desiring the glory that comes from other humans rather than the glory that comes from the only God.

If Jesus has come from the Father, will he return to the Father and accuse them before Him? He doesn't need to do that because Moses will stand as their accuser. It is true that all humans will stand and be judged according to the Word one day, but Jesus is making a point here. They have held tightly to the writings of Moses but they have missed the fact that Moses wrote about Jesus. Jesus is not claiming that if you scour through the writings of Moses, you can find a passage or two that predict the coming of the Messiah. His point is that everything that Moses wrote pointed to the coming of the Messiah. The entire witness of the Old Testament, in fact, was pointing people towards Jesus. But they were so worried about who was and who was not following the law, that they missed God's entire plan. If they wouldn't adjust their own preconceived notions and conceptions of what Moses said, someone whom they claimed to revere, then they certainly weren't going to believe what Jesus was saying. He knew the true purpose of the law, they didn't, so when he talked of the true purposes of God, they simply would not recognize it.

It's easy to begin to approach the Scriptures in a purely academic fashion or to become so attracted to the "rules" of the Bible that we miss the heart of what God is doing in the world. This is where we must constantly make efforts to find the tension between studying the text of the sacred Scriptures but making sure that we allow that knowledge to turn into personal experience, passion, adoration, and genuine worship. That passion and adoration should, in turn, cycle back around and inspire us to gain even more knowledge which will further fuel our passion. It is only when find the proper balance between the head and the heart that we will find the true will and agenda of the living God.



Devotional Thought

Do you ever get so committed to the "rules" that you lose sight of the reconciliation that God wants to bring about for the entire world through His people, the community formed in the life of Christ? What steps can we take to make sure that God's agenda is our agenda?