Where are You COMING From; John 5-7

May the mumbling commence!

Where are you from?  On the surface, that question seems quite elementary.  But the answer could be something thought over for much time.  It would take great deliberation to answer the question fully.  Read from John chapter seven:

At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, "Isn't this the man they are trying to kill?  Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Christ?  But we know where this man is from; when the Christ comes, no one will know where he is from." 

Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, "Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, but I know him because I am from him and he sent me." (Verses 25-29)

If someone would ask me where I am from, I would answer with my hometown.  Most people would give this answer or something similar.  But it is more complicated than that.  I make my home in Hutchinson, Kansas.  That could be one answer for where I am from.  But it is not where I was born.  I have called a number of places home – Elkhart, Indiana, Americus, Georgia, and Hesston, Kansas.  And the city where my birth took place is not the city where I grew up.

So the question quickly becomes more complicated, as you can see.  Yet, these complications are only the ones on the surface.  The deeper question that Jesus answered adds another word to the sentence.  Where are you coming from?  Now that is a different color all together!

I think Jesus said tongue-in-cheek that these people knew where he was from.  They actually didn’t.  They could name the community that Jesus grew up in, but the answer, as we have seen in much deeper than that.  Matthew and Luke tell of Jesus’ birth in a stable in the city of Bethlehem.  That is one answer.  But it is not the answer that the author of John chooses.

John chooses to answer the question of where Jesus is coming from.  It is much more important than where someone calls home or where someone grew up or where someone was born.  It is that question that Jesus addresses after his acknowledgement of the people knowing his hometown.

Jesus was not here on his own.  In other words, Jesus was not working a personal agenda.  Jesus was a person sent.  And Jesus was seeking to be a completely true representative of that person.  That person was God the Father.  The people did not know Him.  Jesus knows the Father because he came from the Father, who sent Jesus.  That is where Jesus was coming from.  Would the people accept him as sent from God?

May you and I accept Jesus as the Messiah of God – sent to show us the way to please God.  May we strive after that level of obedience.  Jesus’ agenda was one with the agenda of God.  May it be so with us!

Where are you and I coming from?  It is an important question to answer each day of our lives.  May we seek that answer together with Jesus and the Holy Spirit as our guide.  Let us leave our agendas behind and pick up the agenda that God has for us.  It is pleasing and perfect…

Enough mumbling for now…

Peace Out