John 7:19-24 (NIV)
Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
“You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all astonished. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a child on the Sabbath. Now if a child can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing the whole man on the Sabbath? Stop judging by mere appearances, and make a right judgment.”
The last time Jesus was in Jerusalem, He had healed the disabled man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-9), an action that should have been lavishly praised for its compassion and power. But the healing was done on the Sabbath, a day on which no work, including healing, was supposed to be done, so the Jewish leaders persecuted Him and were laying snares to try to arrest and kill Him. His statement, spoken directly to the leaders present in the crowd, that they were trying to kill Him, in disobedience to the law of Moses were neither exaggeration nor paranoia.
Of course, the rest of the crowd knew nothing of this plot, so Jesus’ statement seemed like madness to them. They could not imagine their leaders, those they looked up to for spiritual guidance, could possibly be involved in any kind of plot against someone like Him. His accusations really did sound like they were coming from someone who was demon-possessed.
But Jesus ignored the majority of the crowd and kept focusing His teachings on the leaders who really were plotting against Him, trying to help them to see their errors in both belief and teaching. He started with something very basic that they could all agree on: circumcision.
The law required that a baby boy be circumcised on the eighth day after his birth to set Him apart as one of God’s people (Leviticus 12:3). And this rite was to be performed on the eighth day, even if that day was a Sabbath. Jesus’ point was that there was a subtle hypocrisy going on in the hearts and minds of the Jewish leaders. The priests were fine with being required to work on the Sabbath, making the required sacrifices in the temple so that the people’s relationship with God could be kept whole. And they had no problem circumcising a boy on the Sabbath so that that child’s relationship with God could be established. So why were they so angry with Jesus, accusing Him of being a Sabbath-breaker and plotting to kill Him, simply because He had used God’s power to set free a man who had been disabled for 38 long years?
The answer lay not in the leaders’ great honor of the Sabbath, but in their jealousy of Jesus. Here was a man who was not a product of their seminaries, who did not follow all their man-made traditions, but yet who seemed to understand the Scriptures better than they did, and who could perform miracles, the like of which they had never seen or imagined, while they themselves, the ones who were supposed to be so close to God, were powerless. Jesus knew that His plea for them to “make a right judgment”, to look beyond the outer stuff to what God was doing through Jesus, would fall on deaf ears. The jealousy that lay deeply rooted in these hypocritical hearts would continue to fester there and would ultimately result in them arresting and executing Him. But that time was not now. For now, He would heal, He would patiently teach all about God and His kingdom, and he would prepare Himself and His followers for what was to come.
Father, in these leaders, pure devotion to You had been supplanted by their own agendas and their own perks, by their striving for position and authority. They had become so blinded by all of those things that they completely missed who Jesus was and what He was trying to show them and teach them about You and Your kingdom through His actions. Lord, help me to always keep my heart firmly devoted to You and Your ways, and to never allow it to become clogged by biases or self-interest. Amen.