SERMON: When Religious Leaders Don't Believe (John 7:45–52)
When
Religious Leaders Don't Believe
(John 7:45–52)
Series: “John: Life in Christ’s Name” Text: John 7:45–52
By: Shaun Marksbury Date: July 30, 2023
Venue: Living Water Baptist Church Occasion: AM Service
I.
Introduction
We read news stories about pastors who are not who they
claim to be. For instance, just a few
days ago, the news broke about a retired pastor who confessed to murdering an
8-year-old girl.[1] As unimaginable as that scenario is, the crime
in question also took place fifty years ago.
This means he’d been standing in front of people all that time, apparently
lacking any fear of God. We hope for the
full extent of the law to fall upon him, and I shudder to imagine what God has
in store for him in the hereafter!
He’d claim to be a believer, I’m sure, but as James would
say of him, “this man’s religion is worthless” (James 1:26). Surprisingly, other religious leaders are open
about that fact. For instance, the news
broke several years ago about a supposed pastor who is an open atheist.[2] It’s a she (which is an issue all its
own), and she presides over what identifies as a Christian congregation which
is part of the United Church of Canada.
Can an atheist be a pastor, the story asks, and then
it notes:
For the 100-strong congregation at
West Hill, the answer is an unabashed yes. Stripped of God and the Bible, services here
are light on religious doctrine and instead emphasise moral teachings. The service begins with a nod to the First
Nations land on which the church stands and goes on to mention human rights in
Saudi Arabia, Syria and Palestine. Global
concern is coupled with community-building, with members invited to share
significant moments of the past week.[3]
That all seems very nice, but note how that begins: “Stripped
of God and the Bible.” This story is shocking
for seemingly different reasons, but there is an underlying unity in the two stories. Neither person honors God. The first “pastor” hypocritically claimed to
believe while the second was, at least, honest about her disbelief, but they are
both religious leaders who don’t believe.
We meet such people everywhere, including in this text. Here, we see the leaders gathered together in
judgement over Jesus as their officers return to them empty-handed. The rulers here would be those of the
priestly class, the Sadducees and the high priests. Gathered with these rulers would be the
Pharisees, the religious elite of the day.
Together, they comprise the conspiracy to condemn Jesus without a trial,
contrary to their professed faith.
This account gives us insight into how unbelieving religious
leaders operate as they betray our Lord.
We’ll see that those who reject Christ reject truth (vv. 45–47), embrace
ego (vv. 48–49), reject reason (vv. 50–52).
Let’s consider the first of these:
II.
Those who reject Christ reject truth (vv. 45–47)
The officers then
came to the chief priests and Pharisees, and they said to them, “Why did you
not bring Him?” The officers answered, “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” The Pharisees then answered them, “You
have not also been led astray, have you?
These officers come from v. 32. The term “officers” here can attendants,
and they were trained, likely scribes. They
were temple servants, serving in an official capacity. The authority they wielded was ministerial,
though it obviously crossed into the penal realm.
As an aside, and as we’ve noted before, civil authorities must
consider whether their legislation and execution of the law is pleasing to God. Romans 13 describes all those in authority as
“God’s servants” and “ministers.” Even
today, the various offices in government are sometimes called “ministries.” We would do well to remember that all
authority is under God and for service to the community. In this case, these officers use their
knowledge of Moses to evaluate Jesus’s words for themselves before arresting
Him.
In doing this, they show more concern than the rulers. Of course, servants, civil or religious, must
answer if they decide to violate an order.
So, in v. 45, we read that they “came to the chief priests and Pharisees,”
who ask, “Why did you not bring Him?”
This kind of questioning, in theory, provides a balance to the law, though
the religious leaders here do not honor God with what they hear next.
The officers reply, “Never has a man spoken the way this man
speaks.” The Legacy Standard Bible
has a cleaner translation: “Never
has a man spoken like this!”
Jesus was a good teacher, of course — at the beginning of His ministry,
we read, “He began teaching in
their synagogues and was praised by all” (Luke 4:11). There’s
more here than His rhetorical or oratory ability, though. Remember how the people responded to the
Sermon on the Mount: “When Jesus had finished these words, the crowds were
amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and
not as their scribes” (Matthew 7:28–29).
Mark 1:27 shows how far that authority went: “They were all amazed, so
that they debated among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching with
authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey Him.” He spoke with a unique authority.
This terrified the rulers.
As Mark 11:18 says, “The chief priests and the scribes heard this, and began seeking how to destroy Him; for they were afraid of Him, for
the whole crowd was astonished at His teaching.” This is ultimately why they sent these officers
to arrest Jesus.
To be clear, the officers wouldn’t have avoided arresting
Jesus just because He taught well and sounded confident. Self-assurance isn’t proof of true
teaching. Rather, because these men were
trained as Levites and understood the truth, they saw that He wasn’t the revolutionary
and deceiver the rulers tried to paint Him to be. His teachings were too self-evident for these
men to carry out this arrest warrant.
So, the Pharisees answered them, “You have not also been led
astray, have you?” (v. 47). The
translation here is tricky, as it isn’t certain whether they were expecting a
negative or a positive response. So, it’s
also possible to render it as the Legacy Standard Bible has, “Have you
also been led astray?” Either way, they
use the emphatic pronoun, almost as if they were saying, “Not you, too?”
We see in this that the rulers are unwilling to seriously consider
whether they have misread the situation.
These temple officials come back almost with a request to reexamine the
teaching of Jesus, but the leaders are ready with condemnation for everyone
around them. They respond with a rebuke,
because they are already committed to rejecting the truth.
This means that they have also embraced their personal
pride, as we see next.
III.
Those who reject Christ embrace ego (vv. 48–49)
“No one of the rulers
or Pharisees has believed in Him, has he? But this crowd which does not know the Law is
accursed.”
The leaders ask a rhetorical question here and expect a negative
response. They clearly mean to shame the
officers with it. As one commentary
notes, it’s almost as if we’re reading, “ ‘He has none on his side,’ they say, ‘but
low and ignorant men; the rulers, and
every person of distinction, are opposed to him.’ ”[4] They are putting the officers down for even
considering whether the claims of Jesus have reliability when supposedly no one
of importance believes them.
Before we come down on these leaders, this isn’t a horrible thought
(on the surface). After all, they are
the religious leaders.
They should have the knowledge and wherewithal to evaluate the claims of
some religious upstart. God sometimes
works through such authority to prevent His people from being led astray.
This is true in the church. Ephesians 4:11–13 says, “And He gave some as apostles, and some as prophets, and some as evangelists, and some as pastors and teachers, for the
equipping of the saints for the work of service, to the building up of the body
of Christ; until we all attain to the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge
of the Son of God, to a mature man, to the measure of the stature which belongs
to the fullness of Christ.” Our Lord
gave us leaders to help instruct and guide the church, which is why one of the
qualifications for an elder/pastor is that he be someone who is “holding fast
the faithful word which is in accordance with the teaching, so that he will be
able both to exhort in sound doctrine and to refute those who contradict”
(Titus 1:9). God does call religious
leaders to a high task, which is why they are held to a stricter judgment (James
3:1).
Yet, these religious leaders are rejecting the truth,
not bowing to the Word of God. So, their
question doesn’t come from a place of careful or fair analysis (which Nicodemus
is about to point out to them). As
another commentary notes, their question “reveals their pride. They thought they were too educated (v. 15) to
be taken in by a deceiver.”[5] They exalt themselves in their superior
knowledge in asking such a question.
Ironically, the word for they use of rulers here is the same
John uses of Nicodemus in John 3:1. In
fact, Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and perhaps even others are secret
believers. They simply feared being put
out of the synagogue (cf. John 12:42), so they haven’t been vocal.
The arrogant are often ignorant, but that doesn’t stop them from
engaging in elitism. We see it in how
they talk about the crowd in v. 49. They
say, with a sneer, about “this crowd,” declaring that it “does not know the Law.”
They looked down on the people. As one commentary notes, “The Pharisees had a
scorn for the amhaaretz [ʿam-haʾareṣ; עַם־הָאָרֶץ] or ‘people of the earth’ (cf. our ‘clod-hoppers’) as is seen
in rabbinic literature.”[6] One rabbi said that, even if someone…
… ‘learned the Scripture and the
Mishnah [a large corpus of Jewish tradition] but has not served as a student of
the Learned he is one of the people of the land. If he has learned the Scripture but not the
Mishnah he is an uneducated man; if he has learned neither the Scripture nor
the Mishnah the Scripture says of him: “I sow the house of Israel and the house
of Judah with seed of men and seed of cattle [i.e. he is indistinguishable from an animal]” ’ (cf. SB 2. 486).[7]
There were multiple levels of disrespect! Of course, unbelievers will sometimes accuse
believers of not knowing the Bible. But
these are supposed to be the teachers of Israel, and they treat their own congregation
with contempt. Any human religious
leader who sees himself above the people is already in error, regardless of how
solid his teachings seem.
In fact, they go a step further. They call the people “accursed.” Perhaps they had in mind Deuteronomy 27:26,
which says, “Cursed is he who does not confirm the words of this law by doing
them.” Yet, they speak as though all
the people are damned to hell (except for themselves, the enlightened teachers!). These supposed shepherds curse their own flock!
We see that they are full of self-importance throughout these
verses. As the Reformation Study
Bible notes, “The strong prejudice of the chief priests and Pharisees is
apparent in their condemnation of the temple guards (vv. 47, 48), of the crowd
(v. 49), and even of Nicodemus, one of their number (v. 52).” They are willing to condemn everyone except
themselves. This is a sure sign that ego
is driving their opinions, not truth or reason, as we see next.
IV.
Those who reject Christ reject reason (vv. 50–52)
Nicodemus (he who
came to Him before, being one of them) *said to
them, “Our Law does not judge a man unless it first hears from him and knows
what he is doing, does it?” They
answered him, “You are not also from Galilee, are you? Search, and see that no
prophet arises out of Galilee.”
Their condemnations were apparently too much for Nicodemus. Again, he had already been examining the Lord’s
claims. He was with the officers in
spirit — “Never has a man spoken the way this man speaks.” He may have even already been a believer at
this point, which may be why John points out the irony that Nicodemus was “being
one of them.” As an aside, this is evidence for Christianity, that there were
followers among Christ’s most ardent opponents.
However, Nicodemus realizes that he holds a tenuous position. Perhaps he sees the dogged hatred of his
peers, and he knows their willingness to eject people from the synagogues. Rather than revealing himself at this moment,
he chooses to highlight a procedural point.
So, in v. 51, he says, “Our Law does not judge a man unless
it first hears from him and knows what he is doing, does it?” This isn’t a direct quotation of any
particular text, but more of a proverbial summation of the Law. The Law condemned the use of a single witness
or a false report. For instance, it
says, “You shall not bear a false report; do not join your hand with a wicked
man to be a malicious witness” (Exod. 23:1).
It also says, “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be
partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor
fairly. You shall not go about as a
slanderer among your people, and you are not to act against the life of your neighbor;
I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:15–16). Furthermore,
it says, “On the evidence of two witnesses or three witnesses, he who is to die
shall be put to death; he shall not be put to death on the evidence of one
witness” (Deut. 17:6). Later, it says, “A
single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or
any sin which he has committed; on the evidence of two or three witnesses a
matter shall be confirmed” (Deut. 19:15).
So, the Law of Moses is consistent in its pursuit of a fair and
equitable hearing.
Of course, Nicodemus might be summing up more than the first
five books of Moses. For instance, in
the wisdom literature, Scripture espouses the wisdom of hearing both sides to
an issue (Prov. 18:13). Moreover, being
a Pharisee, he would have also been thinking about rabbinical tradition. As one study notes, “Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedath
says in the Midrash on Exodus Rabbah
21:3, ‘Unless a mortal hears the pleas that a man can put forward, he is not
able to give judgment.’ ”[8] We are each limited by our mortality to few experiences
and insights, so it’s impossible to give a fair and right judgment before we
hear both sides.
Nicodemus speaks with wisdom here. It is neither right nor logical for the
leaders to condemn Jesus without giving Him a hearing. They cannot know the truth of His deeds until
they hear Jesus’s words for themselves.
Perhaps Nicodemus is holding onto hope that they will find Jesus’s words
as compelling as he and the officers did, or perhaps not, but simple reason
would dictate that they give Jesus a fair hearing.
Yet, we see that they even reject reason. They ask him, “You are not also from Galilee,
are you?” They know the answer to that
is a “no,” but they ask it anyway, perhaps sarcastically. Nicodemus didn’t say anything in Jesus’s
defense other than a man deserves to defend himself in court; even this reasonable
comment is too much for the Pharisees, and they respond with scorn!
Sometimes, when we share the gospel, unbelievers desire to
debate, and reasonable discussion can produce fruit. Some even thank you for talking to them, even
if they aren’t ready to come to faith.
However, there are some who are so hostile to Jesus Christ that they scoff
at even simple reason. We have prayerfully
evaluate such moments and consider whether we wasting our time, casting pearls
before swine, as it were (cf. Matt. 7:6; 10:14).
Even when someone casts off reason, though, there will be
some justification in mind. In this
case, the Pharisees tell Nicodemus, “Search, and see that no prophet arises out
of Galilee.” Now, if we take that
statement at face value, they are woefully wrong for religious leaders. As one study succinctly notes, “Actually, the
prophets Jonah, Hosea, Nahum, and perhaps Elijah, Elisha, and Amos were from
Galilee or close to it.”[9] It’s difficult to imagine that they were
making such a glaring mistake, but again, they were casting off reason and
truth, causing them to become untethered to reality.
It is possible, though, that they meant this in a more
metaphorical sense. Giving them the
benefit of the doubt, perhaps they were speaking of the Christ in terms of His being
a prophet. If so, then they indeed had a
scriptural polemic or defense against Jesus being the Christ (albeit a weak
one). Even though what they say is true,
it assumes that Jesus wasn’t born somewhere else, like in
Bethlehem. The Bible never says a
prophet cannot be in Galilee, let alone the Christ!
So, either way, we see that the Pharisees are just not being
reasonable. This is what we see with
false pastors and teachers today. They
move the goal post to try to justify some false teaching, even doing so in the
name of Christ. For instance, recently,
a pastor tried to argue that God allows homosexuality because it’s present in
the animal kingdom. When someone pointed
out that animals also eat their own feces, this pastor replied that we shouldn’t
be comparing human beings to animals.[10] That is a false teacher who serves as an
example of how rejecting truth leads to the loss of ability in reason.
V.
Conclusion
We will see Nicodemus again after the crucifixion in John
19:39. It’s interesting that, the man
who once came to Jesus by night during the height of our Lord’s popularity,
steps forward into the light at the lowest point of our Lord. He comes to a true faith.
We cannot always know where a person is spiritually, but as
Jesus said, “You will know them by their fruits” (Matt. 7:16). If they are rejecting the truth of Christ and
reason, and yet, seem to be about promoting themselves and putting everyone
else down around them, then we have enough fruit to examine the tree. They might even claim to be Christian, but we
can see that the fruit is coming from somewhere else.
Perhaps you have known some pastors and teachers in the past
who have since proven themselves to be false.
If you struggle with that, understand that Jesus Christ is still true. Don’t place your hope in me or any other
person; place your hope and trust in Christ alone. Only He is perfect and sinless, the only
righteous Savior, and He will deliver every battle-weary soul.
[1] Leonardo Blair, “Retired pastor confesses to killing
fellow pastor’s 8-year-old daughter nearly 50 years ago,” July 25, 2023, https://www.christianpost.com/news/retired-pastor-confesses-to-killing-fellow-pastors-daughter.html.
[2] Ashifa Kassam, “Atheist pastor sparks debate by
'irritating the church into the 21st century,” April 24, 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/24/atheist-pastor-canada-gretta-vosper-united-church-canada.
[3] Ibid.
[4] John Calvin and William Pringle, Commentary on the Gospel according to John, (Bellingham, WA: Logos
Bible Software, 2010), 1:314.
[5] Edwin A. Blum, The
Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, 1985, 2, 302.
[6] A. T. Robertson, Word
Pictures in the New Testament, (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1933), Jn
7:49.
[7] Rabbi Meir, cited in D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, The Pillar
New Testament Commentary, (Leicester, England; Grand Rapids, MI: Inter-Varsity
Press; W.B. Eerdmans, 1991), 331–332.
[8] Cited in Ronald Trail, An Exegetical Summary of John 1–9, Exegetical Summaries, (Dallas,
TX: SIL International, 2013), 402.
[9] Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne
House, The Nelson Study Bible: New King
James Version, (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1997), Jn 7:52.
[10] The initial exchange can be found here: https://twitter.com/Kdubtru/status/1682894412014125056,
and the false pastor’s reply can be found here: https://twitter.com/kevinmyoung/status/1682900024408014848.