John 7:19-24 - Getting religion right and wrong

7:19,20

Jesus now highlights the hypocrisy of the Jewish leaders. They based everything on keeping the Law, yet not one of them managed to keep the Law. This is the fundamental problem of every single man and woman on the planet. We are sinners. Now we have a choice. We can either face up to the reality of this and go to Christ to seek forgiveness, or we can deny the reality of the situation and try and cover it up. This is what the Jews were doing. And see how elaborate a setup they had created with all the extra rules added on to the Law. This is a common human failing, it is also a something that we can do in the church as well.

Jesus was the only One who had kept the Law, yet they were trying to kill Him.

At this point the crowd join in and we see how fickle their attitude is. Previously some had said Jesus was good, now they think He is mad or demon possessed. They thought it ridiculous that anyone was trying to kill Jesus.

7:21-24

Jesus further highlights the hypocrisy of the Jews. The fact that Jesus had healed a man on the Sabbath had caused great consternation. Jesus then draws attention to the fact that they were quite happy for someone to be circumcised on the Sabbath.

Now this illustrates something interesting. Whenever we draw up a set of rules or guidelines there will come some points where two rules are in conflict. We can react in one of two ways. We can try and make the rules non-contradictory. Sometimes this can be done, but more often than not we will just end up with rule upon rule. The alternative is to exercise common sense. Now with the matter of circumcision the Jews had done this. They had decided that being circumcised on the eighth day was more important than keeping the Sabbath, so circumcision was allowed on the Sabbath. Jesus is not criticising this, what He is criticising is their failure to apply this principle more widely. Setting a man or woman free was more important than a strict observance of the Sabbath, and it was more of a work of God than circumcision was.

The Jews needed to get their own hearts sorted out.