Living Stones – Tuesday, October 3, 2017
Background check
John 6:42
And they said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How is it then that He says, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
In verses 41-51 of this sixth chapter of John’s account of the Gospel, the matter of the bread is now causing the Jews to open a new line of conflict. The happy group of 5,000 men, miraculously fed by a boy’s packed lunch and wanting more, is now breaking into arguments among themselves.
Their initial concerns were over what He has said about the mana in the desert compared to the bread He offered. His attempts to clarify that He was speaking about spiritual things and not natural things seemed to have made matters worse. They rejected what Jesus was saying and now, they were rejecting Jesus Himself.
What is interesting in this section is that the rejection was not based on a strong counter argument. They had no evidence that they could marshal against His claims. Instead, they were arguing on the basis of a background check.
Those of us who follow politics, especially the unending diet of American politics that’s available to most of us, are familiar with this approach. When American politicians are going up against each other in elections, large sums of money are spent doing background checks on each other. Checking records, finding old friends, associates, neighbours, schoolmates and the like. The idea is to find something in the opponent’s background that could be used to discredit them. Never mind the fact that the platform they are presenting may be of good merit, if they could discredit the messenger then the message is doomed.
This is what happened here, someone did a quick background check and remembered that this Jesus is Joseph’s boy. That humble carpenter Joseph. Not only that, we know his mother too. We know this guy’s family, there is nothing special about them. They are from the old neighbourhood and have been with us all the time. This guy is talking a lot of foolishness if He wants us to believe that he had come down from heaven!
It is amazing that when He was performing the miracles they thronged Him. It is even more amazing that when He turned the little boy’s lunch bag into an event catering service they all ate, were satisfied, and now were after Him for more. But the moment that He got into deep things that challenged their approach to life His background became a problem.
Very often today we still reject the message because of the messenger. We could use a variety of other idioms like, don’t judge the book by the cover, and so on. These Jews, as we will see when we examine Jesus’ response to them, were rejecting the opportunity for eternal life because they were rejecting Jesus who offered it.
In another context Jesus was forced to say, If I do not do the works of My Father, do not believe Me; but if I do, though you do not believe Me, believe the works, that you may know and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in Him.” (John 10:37-38)
We must be careful that we do not become like these Jews. That our judgements would not be based merely on natural instincts and human values. We must be careful that the material would not cause us to miss the spiritual.
Think on these things:
- Have you ever been judged on how you look or where you were from rather than on what you were trying to contribute?
- Do you tend to judge others by what you have heard about them previously, or how they appear, without giving consideration to what it is they are trying to contribute?
- Do you think that you have ever rejected the Word of God because of the person who delivered it?
Prayer focus:
Let us pray today that God would help us to be open to receive from the contributions of those persons He sends our way without letting our preconceived judgements get in the way.
In His Grace
Pastor Alex
