Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Jesus begins to teach at the midway point of the feast.

It is the high point of the celebration.

He did His teaching in the Temple courts.

It was common for rabbi/teachers to teach in one of the spacious courtyard areas of the temple.

This first exchange is with “the Jews” meaning the Jewish religious leaders of the day.

They had challenged Jesus’ right to teach at all...He was not highly educated.

He had not studied under any of the prominent rabbis in Jerusalem so who was he to teach?!?

The KJV translates verse 15

How can he be a man of letters (a scholar) without going to college?

From a human perspective Jesus was not an educated person.

He did not have the sheep skins on the wall…He had the look of a rural Galilean and had a Galilean accent to boot…an accent which itself made him sound like an uneducated fellow.

From the day we entered the ninth-grade health class, one blackboard was covered with the names and locations of the major bones and muscles of the human body.

The diagram stayed on the board throughout the term, although the teacher never referred to it.

The day of the final exam, we came to class to find the board wiped clean.

The sole test question was: "Name and locate every major bone and muscle in the human body."

The class protested in unison: "We never studied that!" "That's no excuse," said the teacher.

"The information was there for months."

After we struggled with the test for a while, he collected the papers and tore them up.

"Always remember," he told us, "that education is more than just learning what you are told."

The Rabbis of the day, those who had studied in the rabbinical schools would substantiate every pronouncement by appealing to precedent, to earlier rabbinical judgements.

“Education” in that day meant learning to parrot what someone else had told them…what someone else had said.

Example — These fellows would then stand up and quote multiple rabbis…Rabbi so and so said love God…Rabbi such and such also said love God, as did Rabbi this and that…Therefore I conclude that we are to love God and to do so passionately!

Jesus simply made statements without any reference to Rabbinical teaching of the past.

In the eyes of the Jews of the day this made him look arrogant…they worried that those who attempted to teach in such a way would drift from tradition.

Jesus addresses their fears in verse 16 — He is no upstart with independent ideas of His own.

His teaching gains its credibility and authority from the One who sent Him.

His teaching is one of divine revelation.

And this is a revelation available to all

The person who has an obedient heart…the desire to do God’s will is the one who will understand who Jesus is and realie His teaching is true…it is the fulfillment of the OT revelation concerning the Messiah

Those who have faith in God and do what they know to do…obey the revelation given them up to this moment…they are the ones who will see God’s coming revelation and realize the teaching of Jesus is true.

The American writer Marianne Wiggins wrote the novel Almost Heaven.

One of its central characters is a middle aged woman called Melanie John.

We meet her in the psychiatric unit of the Medical College of Virginia suffering from hysterical amnesia.

Five weeks earlier she was a happily married mother of four living in the Richmond suburbs.

One day five weeks earlier she and her family are in their car heading down the highway.

Her husband Jason, the love of her life, is driving.

The four kids are in the back.

Melanie has been writing in her journal when a gust of wind catches a sheet of paper and rips it out the window.

Jason pulls the car over to the side of the road, Melanie gets out and heads into the field at the side of the road to recover her writing.

That’s when she hears the awful screech of tires skidding, smells the burning of rubber, and turns around to see another vehicle slam into the rear of her family’s car.

The vehicle explodes.

Jason and the children are killed instantly.

Melanie’s system copes by shutting down, by blocking out all memories of this day and of her family.

The last 20 years, the family years, are erased from her conscious memory.

She remembers the day 20 years earlier she graduated law school and went to work in the law office on Broad street.

But meeting Jason and falling in love, the day of her wedding, the birth of her children, the building of their house, the times they all spent at the beach, the fights and the love – she can’t remember any of it.

The amnesia acts as an emotional anaesthetic, but it also robs her of herself.

She has no sense of who she is.

Inside that shell of a body who is Melanie John?

What is her life about?

Where does she fit?

What’s her place, her purpose?

Without the stories of the last 20 years she has no way of knowing.

Without the stories of her past there is no meaningful present and there can be no meaningful future.

The novel recounts Melanie’s journey to recovering her memories, the pain of her loss and the regaining of her sense of self.

One of the things the story reminds us about is that we are made up of our stories.

Our sense of self, of who we are, of why where here, of where we fit and where we’re headed are the map by which we make sense of life.

When you reflect on this you discover that it’s true at both the individual level and the cultural level.

As well as our individual stories we are shaped by our cultural stories, stories which tell us who we are, what life’s about, what we should and shouldn’t value.

For Christians, the Christian faith provides us with an alternate story to that of our culture, and calls us to its sense of place, of value, of direction and meaning.

One day five weeks earlier she and her family are in their car heading down the highway.

Her husband Jason, the love of her life, is driving.

The four kids are in the back.

Melanie has been writing in her journal when a gust of wind catches a sheet of paper and rips it out the window.

Jason pulls the car over to the side of the road, Melanie gets out and heads into the field at the side of the road to recover her writing.

That’s when she hears the awful screech of tires skidding, smells the burning of rubber, and turns around to see another vehicle slam into the rear of her family’s car.

The vehicle explodes.

Jason and the children are killed instantly.

Melanie’s system copes by shutting down, by blocking out all memories of this day and of her family.

The last 20 years, the family years, are erased from her conscious memory.

She remembers the day 20 years earlier she graduated law school and went to work in the law office on Broad street.

But meeting Jason and falling in love, the day of her wedding, the birth of her children, the building of their house, the times they all spent at the beach, the fights and the love – she can’t remember any of it.

The amnesia acts as an emotional anaesthetic, but it also robs her of herself.

She has no sense of who she is.

Inside that shell of a body who is Melanie John?

What is her life about?

Where does she fit?

What’s her place, her purpose?

Without the stories of the last 20 years she has no way of knowing.

Without the stories of her past there is no meaningful present and there can be no meaningful future.

The novel recounts Melanie’s journey to recovering her memories, the pain of her loss and the regaining of her sense of self.

One of the things the story reminds us about is that we are made up of our stories.

Our sense of self, of who we are, of why where here, of where we fit and where we’re headed are the map by which we make sense of life.

When you reflect on this you discover that it’s true at both the individual level and the cultural level.

As well as our individual stories we are shaped by our cultural stories, stories which tell us who we are, what life’s about, what we should and shouldn’t value.

For Christians, the Christian faith provides us with an alternate story to that of our culture, and calls us to its sense of place, of value, of direction and meaning.

The Jews, God’s people, had THE STORY!

They had the Law of God...the Old Testament…they had the revelation of the Old Covenant which pointed to the new…but they were disobedient to it…lacked faith in the God of the Law and missed His revelation again and again.

Jesus makes clear they are in danger of doing so yet again.

Evidence of their current state of disobedience is found in the plot to kill Jesus…He knew what their leaders were scheming.

The law says do not murder yet they were planning a premeditated hit on Him at any moment.

This kind of sickness of heart is what causes one to miss God’s will for his life…disobedience to the revealed will of God can erect roadblocks to any future revelation from Him

When we are living in unrepentant sin there is a coldness of heart…a deafness, callousness to the Spirit of God.

But a heart seeking Him is sure to find Him

Back to the Crowd

Now Jesus turns His attention from the Jewish leaders to the crowd who had come to Jerusalem for the feast.

The crowd answered His charges against them (that they intended to kill Jesus) by accusing Him of being a paranoid, demon possessed man.

Obviously the plot to kill Jesus was a closely guarded secret at this point that no one outside of Jerusalem knew anything about.

They believe Jesus to be mentally ill and even possessed because of what they see as wild claims of a persecution they could not see with their eyes.