7 April 2022 - before Abraham was

Today's Readings

(Audio)

“Amen, amen, I say to you,

whoever keeps my word will never see death.”

Jesus did not give the Judeans room to regard him as merely a teacher or a worker of mighty deeds. Death had been a problem since the beginning, having entered the world along with sin, the consequence of disobedience to God's word.

sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin (see Romans 5:12).

There were hints in the prophets that death might not always have the last word, that the dry bones would rattle and come together again (see Ezekiel 37:1-14), that the Lord himself would "swallow up death forever" (see Isaiah 25:8), that he would raise us up on the third day (see Hosea 6:2). Yet the Judeans were not prepared for Jesus, who was to all appearances human, to be the one who brought these blessings to the world.

“Now we are sure that you are possessed.

Abraham died, as did the prophets, yet you say,

‘Whoever keeps my word will never taste death.’

Are you greater than our father Abraham, who died?

Or the prophets, who died?

Who do you make yourself out to be?”

The claims of Jesus were so great that the Judeans assumed he must just be over selling himself, glorifying himself in order to sound impressive and increase his pull on the crowds. They saw his claim the way we might see the claim on a miracle cure supplement or self help book. 

Jesus answered, “If I glorify myself, my glory is worth nothing;

but it is my Father who glorifies me,

of whom you say, ‘He is our God.’

Jesus was not engaging acts of shameless self-promotion. He was doing the work that his Father gave him to do, teaching others to believe in him so that they could be saved. He was trying to help people who were still implicated in the disobedience of Adam to change from people who disobeyed God's word as Adam did into people who would keep the Father's word as Jesus did, and in doing so move from death in Adam to life in Christ. The words of Christ were not marketing, but a sincere invitation to freedom from slavery to sin that went hand in hand with the fear of death.

he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery (see Hebrews 2:14-15).

The one thing that the Judeans got right was that no mere man, no mere prophet could promise what Jesus did. Abraham himself died, as did Moses and most of the prophets. If Enoch and Elijah were excluded from the list of those who suffered physical death they nevertheless were the exceptions. Even the powerful word of Elijah that raised the widow's son at Zarephath could nevertheless not prevent that child from dying again. There was literally no precedent for the claim of Jesus. Death had been a reality since Adam and it was hard for them to imagine anything else.

Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day;

he saw it and was glad.”

So the Jews said to him,

“You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”

Jesus said to them, “Amen, amen, I say to you,

before Abraham came to be, I AM.”

Jesus was indeed greater than Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Jonah, Solomon, or any other point of comparison the Judeans could offer. He preexisted all of them because, although he was truly man, he was also the only one on earth who could legitimately lay claim to the divine name revealed to Moses at the burning bush, "I AM". Correctly understanding what Jesus was implying but rejecting the truth of it, the Judeans did what the law prescribed for blasphemy of the name of God.

So they picked up stones to throw at him;

but Jesus hid and went out of the temple area.

After all of these impressive statements of Jesus we nevertheless continue to die physical death at the end of a life that may well be mostly seventy years of suffering or eighty for those who are strong (see Psalm 90:10). But in spite of this Jesus was not mistaken, nor was the reality implied by his claim less impressive because what he meant by it. Those who believed in his word would not die spiritual death, would not die "in there sins" and so would escape from the true horror of death. For them death would be merely a transition. Even life apart from the body would merely by a temporary stop along the way to the resurrection of the body on the last day. For those who kept his word death no longer had any venom. It had been unmasked and defanged and was now not only not an object of fear but one to be mocked.

Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting? (see First Corinthians 15:55)

Who could have guessed the deeper truth of the firmness of the promise of God to Abraham and the truly unbreakable nature of the covenant he gave? He said the land of Canaan was to be a permanent possession and delivered on that promise by providing eternal life in the true promised land of heaven. Our part is the same as that of Abraham's descendants, to keep God's covenant. In Christ Jesus we are now the heirs of the faith of Abraham, free from bondage to sin and the fear of death. Think of it! We are not going to suffer everlasting death because we are in Christ! This is the joy of our salvation in which we are meant to take comfort and which we must urgently share to a world still in bondage to the fear of death.

He remembers forever his covenant

which he made binding for a thousand generations

Matt Maher - Christ Is Risen

6 April 2022 - free indeed

Today's Readings

(Audio)

We are descendants of Abraham

They didn't realize that merely being sons of Abraham according to the flesh was not enough. They needed to be his sons by having a faith like his. 

Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham (see Galatians 3:7).

They went on to prove precisely the degree to which sin held sway over their minds.

They answered him, “We are descendants of Abraham

and have never been enslaved to anyone.

How can you say, ‘You will become free’?”

What sort of delusion could allow them to say this? Israel was enslaved and subjugated by one nation after another, Egyptians, Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians, and now they were in the power of Imperial Rome. They pushed back so strongly against the words of Jesus as to clearly contradict reality.

Jesus answered them, “Amen, amen, I say to you,

everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin.

Jesus was speaking of a deeper lack of freedom than merely that of politics or self-governance. He was inviting his listeners to a freedom of soul, from domination by sin, in order to love and follow God. But for those enslaved to sin it was often a sunk cost fallacy. They had already invested so much of themselves in the compromise and complicity with their true captor that they were willing to create excuses after the fact to justify their compliance, willing to turn a blind eye to anything that looked even remotely like evidence that contradicted their desire to believe in their own freedom.

So too does sin make foolish all those over whom it gains mastery. It drives us to tell implausible stories to justify ourselves and makes us willfully blind to any evidence to the contrary.

“If you remain in my word, you will truly be my disciples,

and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

The way to ensure that we are not fooled by the lies of sin is to be firmly rooted in the words of Jesus. The way to freedom is not a new philosophical strategy or historical paradigm for reinterpreting the evidence by our own intellectual might. Without Jesus we always have a tendency to pervert the truth and twist it to serve our preexisting stories. Sin makes absolute objectivity more of a theoretical than a real possibility. Rather, we need one who is stronger than the lies to deliver us unto the truth. We need one who himself was obviously not bound by sin to bestow that same freedom as a gift upon us.

If our God, whom we serve,

can save us from the white-hot furnace

and from your hands, O king, may he save us!

But even if he will not, know, O king,

that we will not serve your god

or worship the golden statue that you set up.”

When we feel as though we are being cast into the fire, and that the force of temptation has been increased seven times more than usual, we can look to the example of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego who did not give in to the demands of King Nebuchadnezzar. They preferred spiritual freedom to anything sin could promise them. 

“Did we not cast three men bound into the fire?”

“Assuredly, O king,” they answered.

“But,” he replied, “I see four men unfettered and unhurt,

walking in the fire, and the fourth looks like a son of God.”

When we desire to remain in the word of God and not give in to the demands of the world, the flesh, and the devil, we are never alone in the fight. There is always a fourth in the fire, and it is he himself who promised to set us free.

Glory and praise for ever!

Hillsong UNITED - Another In The Fire

Newsboys - I Am Free

5 April 2022 - lifted up

Today's Readings

(Audio)

I am going away and you will look for me,

but you will die in your sin.

Where I am going you cannot come.

Those who belong to what is belong cannot ascend to that which is above by their own power. We need the help that only the one from above can give. The default condition of human beings is to belong to this world. But this condition is limited. If it is not interrupted by grace it is destined to come to the end of dying in sin. This is something worse and more terrible than mere death, for it is a death in which the things above remain closed to us, in which we cannot follow where Jesus went. That this sort of destiny is the default for humanity was the consequence of Adam and Eve ignoring God in the garden when he said, "From that tree you shall not eat; when you eat from it you shall die" (see Genesis 2:17). They died a spiritual death of sin in that moment. Those who did not avail themselves of God's mercy would go on to a physical death that was a confirmation of that condition, of that self-imposed separation from the divine.

You belong to this world,

but I do not belong to this world.

That is why I told you that you will die in your sins.

The diagnosis is hard to hear, and perhaps even chaffs against what we consider to be fair. But life abundant and eternal were always unearned gifts to which we had no legal claim. As parents, Adam and Eve were meant to bestow the gifts as a blessed inheritance on the human race. But having squandered them, their children had no recourse but to hope in the mercy of the one who had given them in the first place. And such a hope was not misplaced. For if he had been so generous to those whom he had called into being from nothing, who could do literally nothing to earn his favor, might he not be generous even to those ensnared in sin and in the power of the world, the flesh, and the devil? 

For if you do not believe that I AM,

you will die in your sins.

Indeed though the diagnosis is difficult to hear God did not leave us without recourse. God allowed his people to confront the ugliness of their sin of complaining against God and Moses, manifested in the desert as poisonous saraph serpents. But he himself also provided the cure. They had acted, had sinned and transgressed, but to be healed all the would need would be to look upon the saraph on the pole. All they would need to do would be to agree with God about the ugliness of the problem and turn toward him for healing.

For us, the only way to be free from the domination of sin is to come to faith in Jesus, to believe him when he tells us that he himself is the great "I AM", the same God who spoke from the burning bush to Moses. When Jesus was lifted on high on the cross he exposed the ugliness of sin even more the the serpents in the desert, and at the same moment revealed and even greater love that would not abandon his people to die with that poison in their veins. 

We are often slow to believe Jesus about who he is because it means we must agree with him about his diagnosis about ourselves and the world. But the love poured out on the cross makes accepting that message palatable as we realize just how precious is the love we behold. It is a love so great that we could never be so presumptuous as to ask for it or imagine ourselves to earn it.

When you lift up the Son of Man,

then you will realize that I AM,

and that I do nothing on my own,

but I say only what the Father taught me.

Because Jesus didn't eschew the hard truths some were polarized against him. But we shouldn't miss the fact that "many came to believe in him". He was not speaking to gain favor or tailoring his message to make himself popular. But his unvarnished truth is what made his message of love believable. It was not merely a fairytale fantasy designed to make everyone feel good and for that reason it was all the more trustworthy.

The LORD looked down from his holy height,

from heaven he beheld the earth,

To hear the groaning of the prisoners,

to release those doomed to die.

Brian Doerksen: At The Cross

4 April 2022 - light from light

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus spoke to them again, saying,

“I am the light of the world.

Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,

but will have the light of life.” 

Paul wrote that the cloud that led the Israelites through the desert and the rock that followed them and gave them water to drink were signs that pointed forward toward Christ. They were signs of baptism by which Christians would receive the living water of the Spirit (see First Corinthians 10:1-3). In today's Gospel Jesus taught that he himself was also the true pillar of fire that would lead his people, keeping them from the perils of walking in darkness.

And the LORD went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night (see Exodus 13:21).

When the world around us seems to be a desert and we don't know the way to the promised land let us look to Christ. When darkness descends and we feel ourselves at risk because we can't see the terrain or the hidden threats of wild beasts let us trust in the light of Christ. The more we see ourselves surrounded by a desert, the more we fear the terrors of the night, the nearer we should draw to the source of light.

So the Pharisees said to him,

“You testify on your own behalf,

so your testimony cannot be verified.”

The testimony of Jesus was illuminated from the inside. It shone with a glory that ought to have been sufficient evidence to those who heard him. To some, who recognized that no one had ever spoken like this before, it was sufficient. But the Pharisees who opposed Jesus were among the group "who does wicked things" and therefore "hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed" (see John 3:20). Let us not invest in sin, death, and darkness, as they did. Doing so eventually brings us to a point that we can't bear to see what the light would reveal about us. Let us instead come to the light, because only in the light do we find a safe path to the promised land.

because I know where I came from and where I am going.

But you do not know where I come from or where I am going.

You judge by appearances, but I do not judge anyone.

Appearances are deceptive without the illumination only Christ can provide. Our vantage point is too limited, our data too incomplete, to avoid getting lost on our desert journey. We see some facts and some spiritual truths, but without the revelation of God's plan to us we do not see things in their proper perspective. We see instead only a narrow slice of reality. Not realizing where Jesus came from and where he is going means that we don't realize those things about ourselves either. And so we come to imagine ourselves as accidents of chance doomed to a short and ultimately futile existence before we return to the nothingness from which we came. We need Jesus to reveal himself to us, and in doing so, to reveal to us in turn who we are each meant to be.

God loves us. This is the great truth of our life; it is what makes everything else meaningful. We are not the product of blind chance or absurdity; instead our life originates as part of a loving plan of God.

- Benedict XVI

The Father himself desires to confirm in our hearts that reality of his Son. He desires to draw us more and more into the light of truth that we might follow the footsteps of Jesus on a path that came forth from and returns inexorably to the Father himself. 

Only when we come to the light we will be truly safe from the risk to which the elders in today's first reading feel prey:

They suppressed their consciences;

they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven,

and did not keep in mind just judgments.

Instead we their example we must entrust ourselves to the one who judges justly just as Susanna did. For us as well God will stir up his Holy Spirit and move us to stand up for justice and truth. For the light is not a place where we merely come and hide in order to be safe. It is a call and a challenge that is meant to put the darkness to flight.

The whole assembly cried aloud,

blessing God who saves those who hope in him.

Vineyard Music - Shine Jesus Shine

3 April 2022 - something new

Today's Readings (Year C)

(Audio)

Remember not the events of the past,

the things of long ago consider not;

see, I am doing something new!

The Lord was the one who led Israel by opening a way in the sea and path in the mighty waters. The chariots and horsemen of a powerful Egyptian army followed, but they went on to lie prostrate, never to rise, snuffed out and quenched like a wick, just as Isaiah described. At the time of those events Moses promised that they would mark a new beginning for the people.

Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again (see Exodus 14:13).

After that victory thanksgiving and celebration was appropriate, and in that sense it was inappropriate to forget the former things.  But there was another sense in which being overly preoccupied with the mighty deeds of the past could constrain one's ability to see the new thing God desired to do. If one could only imagine a certain kind of enemy, in the vein of the Egyptian oppressors, and a certain kind of victory, a victory gained in a battle against flesh and blood, one would fail to see the still more impressive supernatural realities to which those past historical facts were meant to point.

Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?

In the desert I make a way,

in the wasteland, rivers.

With eyes constrained to reading the Torah at a strictly historical and literal level one would fail to perceive this mysterious thing taking place in the present. Yet to dismiss those truths was not the solution either. Eyes of faith were required to see how they presaged and validated God's still greater actions in the present. 

Jesus appeared as the source of living waters, even while the circumstances of reality still had the external appearance of a desert. But with eyes of faith one could live in this same reality but without being thirsty, having themselves found the source of living water. Even those figures that represented that danger of the desert themselves perhaps representing Gentiles such as the Romans, as well as sinners and outcasts, would be converted to lives honoring God by this new work that God himself was doing. These conversions, promised by Isaiah, were nevertheless a scandal to the Pharisees who could not recognize in them a promise fulfilled.

For his sake I have accepted the loss of all things

and I consider them so much rubbish,

that I may gain Christ and be found in him,

not having any righteousness of my own based on the law

Paul, because of his prestigious intellectual formation and his unquestionable zeal and passion, ought to have displayed righteousness according to the law if such a thing were possible. But before his conversion on the road to Damascus he was too preoccupied with the past, with a rigid analysis of Scripture that contained no room for Christ or his followers. He demonstrated how a single individual could look at the same realities without faith and then again after having come to faith and see something that completely different.

but that which comes through faith in Christ,

the righteousness from God,

depending on faith to know him and the power of his resurrection

Paul had to recognize the new thing that God was doing. The only entry point into this new reality was for him to embrace the faithfulness of Christ as the source of his own righteousness. Having come to recognize and embrace Christ when he revealed himself to Paul on the road to Damascus, Paul was able to reevaluate all that he previously considered to be has assets to be instead insufficient, "so much rubbish". With only the letter of the Torah and not the Spirit his zeal for the law imploded in a way that not only did not align with what God was doing, but was in fact openly and violently hostile and opposed to that action. Yet in spite of this, Paul did not waste time hung up on these past failures, which, when we consider it, is truly impressive. How difficult it would be for us to move past failures of the magnitude of the stoning of Steven once we realized that they were in fact failures? Yet Paul demonstrated what is meant to be the case for all Christians. He let himself be defined by the new thing God was doing, by the mercy which made he himself a new creation in Christ.

Just one thing: forgetting what lies behind

but straining forward to what lies ahead,

I continue my pursuit toward the goal,

the prize of God’s upward calling, in Christ Jesus.

The Pharisees that accused the woman in the temple were constrained in a way Paul prior to his conversion might well have approved. Their mindset left no room open for mercy. Looking at sinners they could not recognize the possibility of redemption. Looking at Romans they could only see enemies, enemies which to their mind Jesus was no better opposition than they themselves. Their trap was designed to show that Jesus was no better at enforcing the rigorous demands of the law than they themselves, all of them together impotent in the face of the Roman law forbidding them to put anyone to death.

They said this to test him,

so that they could have some charge to bring against him.

To their surprise Jesus did not choose either of the prongs of the trap they had set. He neither suggested that Roman law should be violated nor did he suggest that the law was wrong in its condemnation and punishment of adultery. Instead, he cast that law in a new light, as one which human beings were to flawed and fallible to carry out. He taught in the Sermon on the Mount that even to entertain thoughts of lust were in some sense equivalent to adultery. External observance of the law, however perfect the Pharisees had kept it, did not in fact make them sinless in the eyes of Jesus. They themselves, only interested in such external appearances, probably did consider themselves to be righteous under the law, perfectly qualified to throw the first stone, the second, and and as many as they desired. But the trap had now been reversed. They were not free to do so because Roman law forbade it. By not condemning this woman now they were unmasked as sinners in the sight of the crowd.

“Let the one among you who is without sin

be the first to throw a stone at her.”

We have the same choice that Paul and this woman faced. Will we allow ourselves to be defined by our past failures or will we instead receive and live based on "the supreme good of knowing Christ Jesus" our Lord? Jesus is more than able to send the voices of others, even the voices of our own hearts, that are still speaking words of condemnation, fleeing away one by one.

“Woman, where are they?

Has no one condemned you?”

She replied, “No one, sir.”

Then Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you.

Go, and from now on do not sin any more.”

Only when Jesus tells us to sin no more can we truly begin to live new lives. It is only by his faith in him and the power of his resurrection, the truly new thing he has done, as a reality at work in our own lives, that we can move beyond the old way of looking at things. That old mindset was why we were constrained us to fall again and again. It contained no other possibilities. Only receiving the new mind he desires to give, can set us on a path that is aligned with his will, with the glorious new thing he never ceases to bring forth in our midst.

The Lord has done great things for us; we are filled with joy.

Andy Park - The River Is Here

Trip Lee - Something New (hip-hop)

2 April 2022 - Never before has anyone spoken like this man

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Some in the crowd who heard these words of Jesus said,

“This is truly the Prophet.”

Others said, “This is the Christ.”

Jesus made this trip to Jerusalem more as teacher than miracle worker. There were signs that attested to the truth of his message, including the healing of the paralytic at Bethesda, and his works did testify to him. But he did not set about showing off in order to validate his claims. He did not, for instance, tell the Pharisees, "Watch this and then tell me I am not who I say I am", and subject himself to their scrutiny and judgment. Just as he did not jump from the parapet of the temple when tempted by the devil so too here did Jesus refuse to make a reckless display of God's power in order to validate his claim in the in eyes of others. Jesus did not address himself to those who imagined that they sat in judgment over him, but always instead to those who came to him sincerely and in need.

“Why did you not bring him?”

The guards answered, “Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”

If Jesus had come and confronted those who disbelieved with the multiplication of mighty deeds it is likely that it only would have increased the polarization of the crowd. The wounded egos of Pharisees who saw the superficial favor such a performance would create with the crowds would have been all the more eager to arrest him and put him to death. But Jesus knew just how to walk this narrow path of revealing just enough to allow those who truly desired the truth to have it. By not stepping onto the seen like a comic book hero whose power was obvious and evident to all Jesus was able to address himself to people who might never have otherwise heard or responded to his message, including these guards.

“Never before has anyone spoken like this man.”

The Pharisees were supposed to have been the smart ones, the ones who would be the first to recognize the value of true teaching. But their prejudiced opposition to Jesus prevented them from seeing the signs he provided or from hearing the way in which his words were utterly unique. It isn't so different in our own day. We are like the Pharisees in preferring that God would reveal himself in ways that satisfy the scrutiny of our individual judgment, to show up in the scene in ways that we imagine to be undeniable. We too, even we who know it is his MO, tend to struggle with the hidden ways in which Jesus is wont to work. Further, the smarter and more eloquent we are, the more we are already confident of our own understanding of things, the more ready we are to dismiss the words of Jesus. We do not find here a carefully put together philosophical system, nor scientific ideas that we can test be empirical experiments. They are words that can only be proved by hearts that accept them. As one example, his parables seem so simple and mundane as to be worthless to prideful minds. Only hearts that welcome him in humility can see in that simplicity that infinite possibilities for application, and thus transformation. Hence it is to the simple that God has revealed himself while the wise are snared in their own wisdom.

For it is written:

"I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

and the learning of the learned I will set aside" (see First Corinthians 1:19).

It is easy to misinterpret Jesus if we only give a superficial hearing to his words, if we listen only as those who stand in judgment over him. We will then fail to understand the key truth of from where Jesus had his true origin, and not just from where he seemed to come.

Does not Scripture say that the Christ will be of David’s family

and come from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?”

Jesus did in fact come from Bethlehem, unbeknownst to the crowd. But even this was still only another layer of appearance. His true origin was from the Father, begotten not made, from all eternity. Those who came to him with open hearts alone were able to accept this truth. It required at minimum the patience and humility required to listen.

Nicodemus, one of their members who had come to him earlier, said to them,

“Does our law condemn a man before it first hears him

and finds out what he is doing?”

When God does not work in the way we would prefer, when his revelation of himself is still too hidden for our taste, let us not for this reason reject him in favor of merely human solutions. When his teaching does not confirm we who think ourselves wise in our wisdom but rather unsettles and discomforts us let us not for this reason turn away. Simeon warned Mary that Jesus would be a sign that would be contradicted and Jesus himself confirmed that he would necessarily by a cause of division. 

Let us destroy the tree in its vigor;

let us cut him off from the land of the living,

so that his name will be spoken no more.

When Jesus refuses to play by the rules of the world, to live up to the world's superficial standards, the world tends to try to silence him and force him into conformity with whatever ideologies are the flavor of the week. We Christians too sometimes try to tame him when he doesn't tow the party line. Let us not try to make ourselves safe from Jesus' influence in this way.  CS Lewis captured the untamed reality of Jesus well in the figure of Aslan.

Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh" said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion"..."Safe?" said Mr Beaver ..."Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good.” 

- C.S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia

When Jesus appears too unimpressive to make a difference, when the way of the cross appears to lead only to failure, we need the faith to which his signs bear witness, to which his words are meant to lead us. We can then surrender our need to understand everything and our desire to be perfectly and exactly in control of our own lives. Walking in freedom from these imagined needs of ours we become able to truly follow him, and not only that, but to find in him the joy he promised.

A shield before me is God,

who saves the upright of heart;

Marc James - Surrender

1 April 2022 - the hidden counsels of God

Today's Readings

(Audio)

Jesus moved about within Galilee;

he did not wish to travel in Judea,

because the Jews were trying to kill him.

It was not yet the hour for Jesus to die so he rejected the suggestion from his relatives that he go to the feast in order to show his works and be made known more publicly. When he did go, he took a more low key approach than his relatives suggested. He didn't dazzle them with miracles, but chose to teach in the temple. 

“Is he not the one they are trying to kill?

And look, he is speaking openly and they say nothing to him.

Could the authorities have realized that he is the Christ?

He didn't overawe the Judeans into forcing a choice between belief and opposition. His teaching was always an invitation to realize more deeply who he was. The reason his words were so impressive were because they were from the Father. The reason he knew Scriptures so well was because he himself was the word of God. Speaking thus, as one with authority, and not as one of the scribes or Pharisees, Jesus invited his hearers to a deeper commitment than merely being the spectators of miracles would allow. By taking this approach he stayed sufficiently under the radar of the authorities to continue his mission. He was very much at the very edge of their tolerance. This speech of his, blasphemous to the minds of the Judeans, finally did provoke them to make an attempt to stop him. But it was not this that finally turned them against him enough to precipitate his death, for his hour had not yet come. Thus even later, when darkness seemed to reign, it was not really the Romans or the Judeans who were in control. Even his own hour was according to plan, as he laid his life down in freedom (see John 10:18).

When the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from.”

So Jesus cried out in the temple area as he was teaching and said,

“You know me and also know where I am from.

In response to his impressive teaching they looked for excuses. They felt the need to justify to themselves that Jesus must not be the Messiah that he was more and more appearing to be. But all they had to go on were appearances, and these deceived them. They believed they knew where Jesus was from and yet they were wrong about that on both the natural and the spiritual level. Their very confusion about his origin made the claims of Jesus all the more likely. Yet his claims would not be evident to those who were closed to the one who sent him and to the revelation he himself longed to work in their hearts. All the witnesses to Jesus, whether John the Baptist, his works, the Father, Moses, or the Scriptures would not necessarily force open the hardened hearts of the crowds. 

He professes to have knowledge of God

and styles himself a child of the LORD.

To us he is the censure of our thoughts;

merely to see him is a hardship for us,

Because his life is not like that of others,

and different are his ways.

He judges us debased;

he holds aloof from our paths as from things impure.

The prophecy from the book of Wisdom explained why the crowds would want to reject Jesus, not because of anything really wrong with Jesus or incongruent about his message, but rather because of the way that accepting him would mean accepting his judgment on the world, acknowledging one's own need for mercy. The only way for sin hardened hearts to accept him would take the shape or surrender. And when the suggestion of surrender arose or they felt pushed toward it they would rather instead bush back.

Let us condemn him to a shameful death;

for according to his own words, God will take care of him

May we learn to make the surrender that the crowds were unwilling to make. If Jesus is for a moment the censure to our thoughts it is because he wants to deliver us from the ways in which we err, and to open our eyes from the wickedness that blinds them. He teaches, not to condemn, but to make known the hidden counsels of God, so that we too much share a recompense of holiness and the innocent souls' reward.

Paul Baloche - Open The Eyes Of My Heart