Epistle Masei

Epistle Masei

John 12:26-50

Joh 12:26  If anyone serves me [Yeshua], let him follow me. Where I am, there will my servant also be. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.

Joh 12:27  “Now my soul is troubled. What shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this time?’ But for this cause I came to this time.

Joh 12:28  Father, glorify your name!” Then there came a voice out of the sky, saying, “I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”

Joh 12:29  The multitude therefore, who stood by and heard it, said that it had thundered. Others said, “An angel has spoken to him.”

Joh 12:30  Yeshua answered, “This voice hasn’t come for my sake, but for your sakes.

Joh 12:31  Now is the judgment of this world. Now the prince of this world will be cast out.

Joh 12:32  And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Joh 12:33  But he said this, signifying by what kind of death he should die.

Joh 12:34  The multitude answered him, “We have heard out of the Torah that the Messiah remains forever. How do you say, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up?’ Who is this Son of Man?”

If they literally meant the Torah (as opposed to using the term “Torah” to indicate all of scripture and perhaps even the Oral Law), then this likely refers either to Jacob’s deathbed prophecy of Shiloh or Bilam’s prophecy for the “latter days.”

John, continued:

Joh 12:35  Yeshua therefore said to them, “Yet a little while the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, that darkness doesn’t overtake you. He who walks in the darkness doesn’t know where he is going.

Joh 12:36  While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become children of light.” Yeshua said these things, and he departed and hid himself from them.

Joh 12:37  But though he had done so many signs before them, yet they didn’t believe in him,

Joh 12:38  that the word of Yeshaiyahu the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, “Adonai, who has believed our report? To whom has the arm of Adonai been revealed?”

This is the famous “Suffering Servant chapter of Isaiah which begins:

Isa 53:1 Who has believed our message? and to whom has the arm of YHWH been revealed?…

And before that we read:

Isa 52:10 YHWH has made bare his holy arm in the eyes of all the nations; and all the ends of the earth have seen the Yeshuah of our Elohim.

Yeshua’s audience would certainly have understood the reference.

John, continued:

Joh 12:39  For this cause they couldn’t believe, for Yeshaiyahu said again,

Joh 12:40  “He has blinded their eyes and he hardened their heart, lest they should see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and would turn, and I would heal them.”

Isa 6:9  He [Adonai] said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘You hear indeed, but don’t understand; and you see indeed, but don’t perceive.’   Isa 6:10 Make the heart of this people fat. Make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and turn again, and be healed.”   Isa 6:11  Then I [Isaiah] said, “Adonai, how long?” He answered, “Until cities are waste without inhabitant, and houses without man, and the land becomes utterly waste,   Isa 6:12  And YHWH has removed men far away, and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.   Isa 6:13  If there are yet a tenth in it, it also shall in turn be eaten up: as a terebinth, and as an oak, whose stock remains, when they are felled; so the holy seed is its stock.”

This is another prophecy that they thought was finished and no more relevant to them.  In 70 CE, they found out differently.

John, continued:

Joh 12:41  Yeshaiyahu said these things when he saw his glory, and spoke of him.

Joh 12:42  Nevertheless even of the rulers many believed in him, but because of the Perushim they didn’t confess it, so that they wouldn’t be put out of the synagogue,

Joh 12:43  for they loved men’s praise more than Elohim’s praise.

There were countless secret believers in Yeshua among the Judeans, men of all sects (even the Pharisee sect).  As long as no one asked them point blank, they could conceal their belief.  For many, it was not so much “love” of praise as it was fear of persecution that made them keep silent.  No doubt some were able to act “behind the scenes” to mitigate circumstance for other believers who were being persecuted or jailed by the unbelieving men in authority.  Like Esther resided in the King’s palace without revealing her heritage, many of these kept silent for as long as they could, to be in a position to help others.

John, continued:

Joh 12:44  Yeshua cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me.

Joh 12:45  He who sees me sees him who sent me.

Joh 12:46  I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in me may not remain in the darkness.

Joh 12:47  If anyone listens to my sayings, and doesn’t believe, I don’t judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Joh 12:48  He who rejects me, and doesn’t receive my sayings, has one who judges him. The word that I spoke, the same will judge him in the last day.

Joh 12:49  For I spoke not from myself, but the Father who sent me, he gave me a mitzvah, what I should say, and what I should speak.

Joh 12:50  I know that his mitzvah is eternal life. The things therefore which I speak, even as the Father has said to me, so I speak.”

The Torah is the plumbline by which all our actions will be measured – its words are the judgment by which we will be judged.  Those who wish to walk in the light must walk in the true Halacha of Torah, for as the scripture says:

Pro 6:23 For the mitzvah is a lamp, and the Torah is light. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life…

Isa 8:20 To the Torah and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

Next:  Kollel Masei.