John 8:2 Commentary and Bible Study

But early in the morning – as though nothing in the world was the matter, as though nothing had happened, as though there were no threats against him, no attempt to seize him and to engineer his execution – early in the morning he came again into the Temple, ‘and all the people came unto him’ – the people seemed to know he would be back and he would spend the day teaching – ‘and he sat down’, that was the custom: they sat down. In spite of the tension, in spite of the problems, he sat down and taught them. See the supreme calm of Christ because he is God, he is divine. He knows that it is not time for any attempt to arrest him to prove successful, and he has come in order to teach.What was he teaching them? We are given two clues here. The first is in chapter 7:37 where we read – ‘In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.’ He had been explaining the feast, and part of the feast was that every day water would be drawn from the pool of Siloam and taken to the Temple where it would be put into the base of the altar, to remind them of the water flowing from the rock at Meribah, when the people in the wilderness were sustained, and that great river from the rock which followed them miraculously wherever they went. Christ was explaining to them that ultimately, though this was literal history, it was a symbol, a foreshadowing, a type of Christ who would come and would bring rivers of spiritual life to all who found him. The second is in chapter 8, with another of the great figures. ‘Then spake Jesus again unto them, saying, I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.’ During the feast of tabernacles, the great Temple candelabra that hung 75 feet over a court in the Temple were lit, and there was great celebration. And we read that the people would march with torches in the street. It was a great time of illumination, reminding them of the burning, fiery pillar that led them in the deliverance out of Egypt, through the wilderness journeys, and also perhaps represented the Shekinah cloud in the Tabernacle of old. So he was explaining the feast of tabernacles to them and its purpose and its symbolism better than they had ever heard before, and they were entranced, he held them spellbound, so that the chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees who do nothing to intervene or to interfere.