November 5, 2018 Bible Study — Do Not Accept, Or Reject, the Truth of an Argument Based On the Authority of the One Making It

I am using the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on John 6-7.

    After Jesus fed the 5,000 the crowd followed Him seeking more free food. Jesus told them they should spend their energy seeking the eternal life which He could give them rather than perishable things like food. The crowd reacted to this by saying they wanted to do God’s works as well. Jesus told them that the only work God wanted from them was for them to believe in Him. At which point the crowd demanded a miraculous sign from Jesus, giving as an example the manna which Moses gave their ancestors in the wilderness. This was the same crowd which had witnessed Jesus feed over 5,000 people from five loaves of bread and two fish. How often do we do the same thing, respond to the miraculous things God does for us by demanding He do more for us?

    When Jesus was teaching in the Temple, the religious leaders sent the Temple guards to arrest Him. The Temple guards returned without arresting Jesus and told those who had sent them that they had never heard anyone speak the way that Jesus did. This led the religious leaders to ask them how they could possibly believe anything He said when none of the educated did? They were using an appeal to authority to dismiss Jesus’ teachings. They made no attempt to refute what Jesus taught. They merely expected people to accept it on their authority, because they were the ones educated in the Law and Scripture, that He was wrong. Even today we have people who wish for us to take it on their authority that Christianity is wrong. Unfortunately, there are many people who accept that argument.