April 27, 2023
Divine Teaching
“But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach. The Jews then were astonished, saying, ‘How has this man become learned, having never been educated?’” John 7:14-15 (NASB)
When I first began student ministry, I had zero confidence in my abilities to teach. One day our Student Pastor (you know him today as your Senior Adult Pastor) asked me to begin working with students. I told him I didn’t have the knowledge to teach. He asked me to help facilitate a Wednesday night high school boy’s group. Time went by. This pastor took a chance on me. Later I taught a Senior High School Sunday School class. I began to pour myself (along with good discipleship) in the Scriptures each week. I learned when God enables, He can accomplish what He desires. I even learned He still uses donkey’s to speak today (Num. 22:28-30).
“But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began to teach.” Jesus waited for the right time to show Himself. He knew the Jews would be looking for Him as people arrived inside the city of Jerusalem. We often ask why He would appear so late. We also see Him make His appearance in places from His past. At the age of twelve Jesus was in the temple as Luke records, “After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46-47). “Jesus went up into the temple.” Jesus was home in His “Father’s house” (Luke 2:49). In His teachings at the age of twelve, “everyone who heard Him was amazed at His understanding and His answers” (Luke 2:48). Today, we see Jesus now as an adult once again astonishing the Jews in their own temple.
Their response was still the same as when Jesus was a child, “The Jews then were astonished, saying, ‘How has this man become learned, having never been educated?” Even after all the miracles, healings, feeding of the five thousand (more like 20,000), the Jews still failed to compare the acts to works of God. Robertson says, “It is not the wisdom of Jesus that disconcerted the Jewish leaders, but his learning (Marcus Dods). And yet Jesus had not attended either of the rabbinical theological schools in Jerusalem (Hillel, Shammai). He was not a rabbi in the technical sense, only a carpenter, and yet he surpassed the professional rabbis in the use of their own methods of debate. It is sometimes true today that unschooled men in various walks of life forge ahead of men of lesser gifts with school training. This is not an argument against education, but it takes more than education to make a real man. Probably this sneer at Jesus came from some of the teachers in the Jerusalem seminaries. “Christ was in the eyes of the Jews a merely self-taught enthusiast” (Westcott).”[1] These teachings Christ shared were expository (expounding upon the Word) in nature. This was the same type message shared at the Mount.
When I was younger, I felt untrained (officially) to share anything about the Bible. In fact some of my first times speaking it was probably the simplest of messages. God used the ignorant to accomplish great things by His grace and mercy. So the next time someone asks you to share something, remember it is God who gives, not the best university. Jesus never needed it because He wrote it! Who else was better qualified to do this? He can and will work in and through you if you let Him!
[1] A.T. Robertson, Word Pictures in the New Testament (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Jn 7:15.