They Searched the Scriptures and Would Not Come to the One They Were About

There is a particular kind of young person in this community who can quote more Scripture than most adults in most churches in this country.

He has been in it three times a week his whole life. He has heard the whole book read out loud more than once. He can find things in it without the index. He knows the arguments, the objections and the standard answers, and he learned all of it before he was fifteen, in two languages.

And if you asked him, quietly, in a car, when he last talked to Jesus about something that was actually happening in his life, he would have to think about it for a while.

Not because he does not believe. He does. He would defend it in a room full of people who did not. That is exactly the strange part.

He knows the book, and the Person the book is about is somebody he knows a very great deal about and has never really gone to.

I know that sentence sounds like an insult. It is not. It is a description, and the one who first gave it was speaking to the most biblically serious men of His generation, and He did not raise His voice while He said it.

He grants them everything and then names the gap

Look at what He concedes before He says anything difficult.

Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me. And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life. (John 5:39-40, King James Version)

Search the scriptures. He is not telling them to stop. Their searching is real, their diligence is real, and He does not attack any of it.

He simply says the searching arrives at a witness stand rather than at a destination. They are they which testify of me. The book is a testimony, and a testimony points away from itself toward somebody else, and a man can study a testimony very carefully for forty years without ever going to meet the person it is about.

You are holding something that testifies, and a testimony was always meant to hand you on. John 5:39 uses the word testify about the whole of Scripture, and it is the Holy Spirit who is described in John 15:26 as testifying of Him too, which means the pointing is His work and not a burden on your intelligence.

The gap is not a knowledge gap

Then the sentence that stops me every time I read it.

And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.

Will not come. Not cannot. Not have not been told. Not lack the information. He does not diagnose ignorance in men who had memorized the Torah; He describes a motion that has not been made.

That is a relief if you let it be one, because it means the thing missing is not something a person has to go and learn. There is nothing to acquire first. The gap between a man who knows all of it and a man who has come is not measured in study hours.

It is a step, and it is small, and it is available to somebody who has known everything for twenty years and to somebody who has known nothing for twenty minutes, on exactly the same terms.

You have not been failing an exam, and there is no more material to cover first. John 5:40 names a motion rather than a deficiency, and it is the Spirit who is given, Romans 8:15, so that a person cries out to Him directly rather than preparing to.

He said the whole book was about Him

If John 5 leaves any doubt about how much of Scripture He is claiming, Luke closes it in one sentence on a road.

And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. (Luke 24:27)

Beginning at Moses. All the prophets. All the scriptures. Three sweeping phrases in one verse, and the subject of every one of them is himself.

So the book a person memorized as a child was never a rulebook with some stories in it. It was a long, patient, four thousand year introduction, and the introduction has always been leading somewhere, and it does not become an introduction only in the last quarter.

That reframes what all that memorizing was. It was not wasted and it was not the point. It was a very long walk toward a door, and a man can be extremely far along a walk and still not have knocked.

You were being introduced the whole time, and the introduction was never the meeting. Luke 24:27 has Him expounding all the scriptures as things concerning Himself, and it is the Spirit of truth, John 16:14, who is named as the one who takes what is His and shows it, which is what turns a text into an introduction.

Paul counted the knowledge as loss for the knowing

There is a man in the New Testament with the most impressive Scripture credentials of anybody, and he says something about them that only works if the distinction in John 5 is real.

Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord. (Philippians 3:8)

Watch what he sets against what. Not knowledge against ignorance. The knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord against everything else he had, and everything else he had was a first class religious education.

And my Lord. Two words, and they are possessive, and they are the whole difference. Paul does not say the knowledge of the Messiah. He says my Lord, which is the language of somebody who has come and not merely studied.

I want to be careful not to make this sound like learning is the enemy. Paul kept his learning and used it in every letter he wrote. He did not throw it away; he reranked it, which is the same move Jesus was making in John 5 and the same move Matthew 23 makes about the weightier things.

You are able to keep everything you know and have the Person as well. Philippians 3:8 reranks rather than discards, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:3, that anybody says Jesus is Lord in the possessive way Paul is using it.

The door He describes has a handle on the inside

The most famous picture of this in the whole Bible is a knock, and the detail people forget is who is standing where.

Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. (Revelation 3:20)

That is said to a church. Not to outsiders. To a congregation, in a letter addressed to believers, which means it is entirely possible to be inside the building and have Him outside the door.

And notice how ordinary the promised thing is. Sup with him. A meal. Not a program, not a role, not a position in a service. He describes sitting down and eating with somebody, which in this community is the highest thing anybody offers anybody.

That is what is being offered to a young man who can quote the whole book. Not more information about the guest. The guest, at the table, eating.

You are being knocked for, and the hearing and the opening are all that is being asked. Revelation 3:20 puts the standing and the knocking on His side of the door, and it is the Spirit who says come, Revelation 22:17, which means the invitation is carried by God rather than assembled by you.