Just the Facts?
by David A. DePra
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by David A. DePra |
| Shall Christ come out of Galilee? Hast not the scripture said |
| that Christ cometh of the seed of David, and out of the town |
| of Bethlehem, where David was? So there was a division among |
| the people because of Him. (Jn. 7:42-43) |
| Note the situation in John 7. The peole were debating as to |
| whether Jesus was the Christ. They had heard Him teach and |
| speak. They saw His many miracles. It was inescapable that |
| there was something special about this man -- about this very |
| remarkable man. Could this be the Messiah, the very Christ they |
| had waited for so long? |
| The trouble with this debate was that it degenerated from the |
| witness of the perfect Son of Man down onto another level: The |
| facts. And when that happened, the correct facts were missing. |
| You see, these people knew that the scriptures said that the |
| Christ must come from Bethehem. That WAS a fact. But then |
| they made a false assumption: They assumed Jesus was from |
| Galilee. This was a so-called "fact" which many of them could |
| not get by. They stumbled over it. |
| In a way, you can scarcely blame them. Afterall, Jesus did |
| come from Galilee. He grew up there. This was widely known. |
| Futhermore, everyone knew His parents. This compounded the |
| matter. Some of these people remarked, "When the Christ |
| appears, will we know where He came from?" So here was |
| Jesus, preaching and teaching, not fitting the facts as these |
| people expected the Messiah to fit them. So many of them would |
| not believe. There was division and arguing about Him. |
| Now you would think that Jesus would have simply said to |
| them, "Look. I am from Bethlehem. I only grew up in Galillee." |
| But no. Rarely did Jesus try to set them straight on the facts. He |
| let them go on disputing and arguing. |
| Why? Because the facts should give way to the witness. |
| Imagine the Son of God standing there in human form. He is |
| completely without sin and void of all human vice. He never sins |
| once with His mouth, nor by His actions. But I am not moved by |
| any of that because He just doesn't fit the facts as I expect them? |
| What we have here is not a intellectual problem. It is not a |
| matter of understanding. No. Here we have a MORAL problem. |
| Rather than an inability to believe, it is a refusal to believe. I |
| refuse to believe because somewhere I want my own way. And |
| if I accept Jesus as the Christ, I fear I won't get it. |
| Should we ignore the facts? No. Everything that the Bible |
| says is factual. And all Truth is factual. It wouldn't be Truth |
| otherwise. We should always seek the Truth and not settle for |
| less. But we should never set up our present understanding of |
| the facts as an expectation we demand God meet. No. He won't |
| meet our demands. He will expect us to "lean not upon our own |
| understanding," and believe what our heart tells us is the Truth. |