If you follow my SermonCast, or attend at Immanuel than you
know as of late I have been in the Gospel of John chapter 9. We have learned many practical life lessons
from this passage.
I want to draw your attention to verse 28.
And they reviled him, saying,
“You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses.
(John 9:28 ESV)
They were drawing the line in the sand. As they draw this line they bring up
Moses. This comes up a lot in scripture,
and we need to know what it means. When they say Moses they mean two things…
1. The man Moses
2. The writings of
Moses
Like here sometimes they mean both. Moses wrote the first five books of the
Bible. It is called the Pentateuch, It
was also called the Torah.
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
When they say, “We are disciples of Moses”, they mean we are
followers of those five books.
This is sad because Jesus would tell them in John 5:39 that
they search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal
life, but it is the scriptures that speak of Jesus!
What is more is that they probably have Isaiah 42 memorized
and yet they still could not recognize Messiah.
Isaiah 42:7 says that the Messiah will open the eyes of the Blind.
The bells should have gone off. The alarm should have been
ringing. Here is the deal: They were studying a book but it was not
penetrating their heart. They had theoretical knowledge without practical
application.
Here is a real statement of truth:
Theoretical knowledge without practical application is
dangerous.
So they searched those books and those books spoke about the
man who was before them but they could not see it because they where blind
themselves
So the reference to Moses
was at times “the scriptures” and sometimes they were talking about “the
person, Moses.”
They had wrongly elevated Moses, so much so that when Jesus
comes to them as God in the flesh they fail to see what God is doing, and who
HE is because they had so put the person of Moses up so high he had become an
idol to them.
They could not get off the idea of all he did. Moses was the man who had brought them
light. The children of Israel were led
by a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night.
Moses had brought that light.
Moses also had given them water. He struck and later was told to speak to a
rock and in so doing brought forth water for the people to drink. So Moses was light and water. And Moses had given them bread. He brought Manna every day for them to eat.
Then along comes Jesus Christ who says:
I am the
light of the world
I am the
living water (And)
I am the
bread of life
Jesus did not say he had those things but that
he was those things.
This challenged the religious posture of the day. He was challenging their false
assumptions. Instead of humbling these
men it made them mad.
I think it is possible that Jesus wants to challenge our
false assumptions today.
What are some of the false assumptions that you are holding
onto today?
