John 5:39-40
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.

The people in Jesus’ day had everything they needed to believe on Him as the Messiah.  They had the witness of John the Baptist, the works that Jesus did, God the Father, but most of all, they had Scripture—what they were to be basing everything on.  Those other things might have been new, but they’d had the Scriptures all along.  They’d had the testimony of Moses, the words of the prophets, everything that pointed to Jesus as come from God, just like He promised.

The Jews’ lives were to revolve around the Word of God.  This was to be the center of their lives and the source of their wisdom, knowledge and understanding.  But did the Pharisees ever search the Scriptures?  Did they ever think that maybe they didn’t know it all and look into God’s Word to find Jesus looking back at them?  If they had, they would have never been able to deny Him.  And the same is surely true for us.  The Scriptures tell us all that we need to know.  They reveal Jesus to us.  They prove what He is saying is true because it was written already.  We just have to look, and we will find Him there.

Nicodemus sought truth, not status quo, and became a believer, but many of the Pharisees simply rejected God’s Word.  They had it available.  They may have known it well.  But they didn’t apply it.  They didn’t accept it.  They didn’t care about it, or else they wouldn’t have so easily dismissed everything that Jesus was saying and done so much to oppose Him.  They thought they had it all figured out and that by doing things their way, they would come out on top in the end.

Let’s not be fooled, and let’s not be hindered by pride.  Let us go right to the source and base everything on the foundational truth of God’s Word.  Let’s depend on our Bibles for the answers to life.  Let’s seek to know God and His ways from His book.  And if we look, we can’t help but find Jesus there, written about long before He ever even came.  It is a truly amazing story, and if we take it to heart, if we believe on Him, then we really will have eternal life and we won’t be able to deny the Word of God.