Moses vs. Jesus

Who is Jesus? part 75 –  John 7:12-24

Redemption and the Pawn shop

I bought my second bass guitar at a pawn shop. It cost me £415 after bartering, the same model is going today, three years later, at £516 on Ebay and £583 on Reverb, so even taking three year’s inflation into account I got a bargain. Here he* is during a set up, I love swoop in the grain pattern on his fretboard, which is normally obscured by the strings.

I like pawn shops. The idea that you can pawn something of value when you need the money and then buy it back when cash is less tight shows what the Bible means by redemption. Just as you can buy back what belonged to you, so God buys back what is his. It’s as simple as that.

Hold that in mind as we look at the next part of John’s Gospel.

¹² And there was much muttering about him among the people. While some said, “He is a good man”, others said, “No, he is leading the people astray.” ¹³ Yet for fear of the Jews no one spoke openly of him.

¹⁴ About the middle of the feast Jesus went up into the temple and began teaching. ¹⁵ The Jews therefore marvelled, saying, “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?” ¹⁶ So Jesus answered them, “My teaching is not mine, but his who sent me. ¹⁷ If anyone’s will is to do God’s will, he will know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on my own authority. ¹⁸ The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. ¹⁹ Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. Why do you seek to kill me?” ²⁰ The crowd answered, “You have a demon! Who is seeking to kill you?” 

A. ²¹ Jesus answered them, “I did one work, and you all marvel at it. 

B. ²² Moses gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers),

C. and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. 

C’ ²³ If on the Sabbath a man receives circumcision,

B’. so that the law of Moses may not be broken, 

A. are you angry with me because on the Sabbath I made a man’s whole body well? ²⁴ Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgement.”

John 7:12-24 Th e paragraphs towards the end are mine, to reveal a poetic format.

There are three groups Jesus speaks to in this passage.

The Jews.

The Judeans in some translations, These are the Jewish leaders, mostly made up of three groups, Sadducees, Pharisees and Scribes. They disagree with each other but are willing to put their differences aside in the common cause of getting away with Jesus. Those leaders who are supportive of Jesus, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea are named, are Pharisees.

The crowd.

The ordinary people of the region of Judea. They largely follow the teaching of their leaders, but seeing Jesus leads some to question this.

The people.

These are those from outside Jerusalem who are attending the feast. They were split on the question of who Jesus is, some saying he’s a good man and others that he’s a deceiver.

The separate paragraphs towards the end in the reading above are in the form of a chiasmus. Chiasmus, meaning crossing over, is a form used in nearly all Psalms and often in the New Testament. It is a repetition of similar ideas in the reverse sequence. Where there is a central section it is often the main theme.

The chiasmus shown above is also the central part of a longer chiasmus which goes from verse 12 to 31, But after a brief introduction I’m moving on to the central section here, the outer parts of the chiasmus will be in next week’s post.

The Law and Redemption

What Moses did was to buy God’s people back. When Jacob and his family went into Egypt they were God’s people. They were only a large extended family, consisting of Jacob, his three wives (Rebekkah had died in childbirth) and his 12 sons their wives children plus any servants and slaves they owned. In Egypt they became a vast number of descendants, and in the desert they became a nation.

When God gave Moses the law on Sinai, the people were already redeemed, God had brought them out of slavery and bought them back when he defeated the Egyptian armies at the Red Sea. The people were already redeemed, bought back by God when the law was given. It was given to people who were already redeemed. The law cannot lead to redemption that’s not its task. Redemption is not earned by keeping the law, it is a free gift from God.

When Jesus is accused of breaking the Jewish Law, or asked an awkward question about the Law he generally goes back to before the law was given. Jesus is being asked about healing on the Sabbath, referring back to when he healed a disabled man at the pool of Bethesda. Jesus goes back not to the Sabbath law, but to when circumcision was given to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the fathers referred to in verse 22. Jesus points out that in order to keep the Abrahamic law, a baby boy can be circumcised on a Sabbath, breaking the Mosaic law. Not the boy, it is the mohel or urologist that breaks the law.

But was it against the Jewish law to heal on the Sabbath? The Jews in Jesus’ day were having a debate about it. Those following Rabbi Shammai were very strict, No healing on the Sabbath at all, whilst the followers of Rabbi Hillel were less strict, but even they would allow physicians to heal if it was a life threatening illness or injury. If it was a chronic illness you had to wait until after sunset, when the Sabbath had ended.

So why did Jesus break the law? He didn’t break it. The law does not ban healing on the Sabbath, Jesus was going against the interpretation of the Pharisees of the Law, not the Law as given.

But in this passage there is no healing of the Sabbath, they are discussing an event from chapter 5. Jesus will heal on the Sabbath again in John’s Gospel, of a blind mas at another pool, the pool of Siloam. This is halfway between the two, and having seen the way John has structured his writings so far, I can see it is deliberate.

Three times healing on the Sabbath is mentioned in John’s Gospel, it has to be significant. On the other hand, the Commandment about the Sabbath is the only one of the ten given to Moses that is not repeated anywhere in the New Testament. What we have instead is this:

Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. – Colossians 2:16-17.

The Sabbath is a shadow of things to come that are fulfilled in Jesus, says Paul. I’ll go further than that. Jesus IS the Sabbath.

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*I refer to this bass as he because it is a long scale instrument and my other bass is short scale, I call them Big Brother and Little Sister.