Feast: Jesus and the Feast (Part One): Alignment With God
#FT23-01PM
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 30-Sep-23; 81 minutes
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transcript:
The four gospels contain very little about the Feast of Tabernacles and they are similarly stingy with Jesus' activities and words on or about the Feast. Well, the gospels mention God's holy days a few times. They mention the Sabbath a lot. But I am speaking about the holy days, the appointed times other than the Sabbath.
The lack of commands about keeping them and the apostle John's tendency to call them Jewish or feasts of the Jews, has convinced a lot of theologians out there that God's appointed times are immaterial to the New Testament church. And that is a real shame because keeping them opens God's revelation like little else. I mean, without keeping the annual Sabbaths of God, we would not know things like what His plan is, what are the steps, how does He work with the church and then with the world, and all those other things that we get out of studying these holy days and their themes year by year.
Gospel references to Passover and the holy days are few, yes, but there are more there than most people realize. For instance, the gospels contain altogether 89 chapters over Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, 13 of which take place on Christ's final Passover. Now, if you do the math, 13 into 89, it is 14.6% of the gospels take place on that final Passover. That is a lot, almost 15% of the gospels have to do with just one day.
Now, Matthew, who writes to the Jews, the book where one might expect the holy days to appear the most, at least once you would think, contains almost nothing about the holy days. It does mention Unleavened Bread once, at least once, but none of the others by name. I found that odd. I probably knew that but when I was going through it for the sermon, it struck me that Matthew, the most Jewish of the gospels, contains so little about the supposedly Jewish holy days.
It is the same for Mark. He was also a Jew. You would think that it would have had an effect on him, but he and Matthew are in pretty much lockstep on that subject. Luke, a Gentile, mentions the feast of the Passover in chapter 2, verse 41. He implies Atonement in chapter 4, verse 16 through the end of the chapter. As we heard from David [Grabbe] recently that some think it is Pentecost, but Atonement seems much better, much preferable. And he also refers to Unleavened Bread in chapter 22, verse 1.
But it is in John's gospel that the biblical feasts appear most. In fact, some say he structured his entire gospel on them. He mentions Passover and Unleavened Bread in chapter 2, there is an unnamed feast of the Jews in chapter 5, verse 1. I mean that could be anything from Unleavened Bread to Tabernacles to Trumpets. So, not exactly sure which one that is, but it is another of God's feasts. Chapter 6 has another mention of Passover that is coming up. Chapter 7 is about the Feast of Tabernacles. The next three chapters do not cite a holy day, but one can interpret the internal chronology of those chapters to imply that they all occur on the Eighth Day. Chapter 12, verse 1 says the Passover is six days away. And of course, chapters 13 through 19 take place on that fateful Passover. So John has a lot about the holy days in his gospel.
This quick survey that we just went through means that only from John 7 do we know for certain that we see Jesus speaking and acting during the Feast of Tabernacles. Some say (if you want to get in an argument with somebody about this), that when the disciples mentioned building tabernacles after Jesus was transfigured before them in Matthew 17, Mark 9, and Luke 9, that tabernacles was near. It was on their mind so they the first thing out of Peter's mouth was, "Let's build a tabernacle for them too." In John 1 there is a verse in there that He tabernacled, that is, the Word tabernacled with men. He came in the flesh in this earthly tent, as Peter would call it later. But that is just speculation that John had the Feast of Tabernacles on his mind.
John 7 then becomes a gold mine to discover what was on Jesus's mind during that time, and what we find may be a little bit surprising as we go through John 7. So in this sermon and the next one that I have on Tuesday, we are going to be digging into John 7 to see what we can discover there about Jesus' words and actions on this Feast. We are going to split the chapter roughly in two. We will cover the first 31 verses today and the rest on Tuesday, and we are going to find there various themes: themes of timing, themes of true teaching, righteous judgment, and origins.
Most of these are not normal themes of the Feast as we think of them. But this is what Jesus was thinking about and talking to the Jews about on this Feast. And maybe it was actually the last Feast of Tabernacles that He kept on earth six months before that fateful Passover. So we are going to see the Feast of Tabernacle's teaching God chose to document in His Word and it therefore becomes worth studying, worth thinking about.
Let us go to John 7, verses 1 through 13. Now, before we actually read it, I want you to think about where this is placed in the the flow of this gospel. Because just before this, in John 6:60-71, that section wraps up the "I am the bread of life" teaching where He also said, "Eat My flesh and drink My blood." And that resulted in the Jews thinking He spoke about cannibalism. And one of the results of that was that many of His disciples left Him. It also mentions, as we would go through the the latter part of that particular passage, that He kind of highlights how special the Twelve were. And Peter, saying, "Where would we go? You have the words of life." Yet we also find that one of the Twelve was Satan's disciple in actuality and would betray Him to the Jews and that would lead to His death.
And so what happened here as Jesus thought about this it is not necessarily said explicitly this way. But I know that a certain amount of time passed between verse 71 in chapter 6 and verse 1 in chapter 7. He had some time to think about the repercussions of this teaching that He had just given. And He must have thought at that point, this is getting too hot, things are moving too fast. And so we have chapter 7.
John 7:1-13 After these things, Jesus walked in Galilee; for He did not want to walk in Judea, because the Jews sought to kill Him. [That is how hot it had gotten after this discourse about "Eat My flesh and drink My blood," and "I am the bread of life."] Now the Jews' Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brothers therefore said to Him, "Depart from here and go into Judea, that Your disciples also may see the works that You are doing. For no one does anything in secret while he himself seeks to be known openly. If You do these things, show Yourself to the world." For even His brothers did not believe in Him.
Then Jesus said to them, "My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hates Me because I testify of it that its works are evil. You go up to this feast. I am not yet going up to this feast, for My time has not yet fully come." When He had said these things to them, He remained in Galilee. But when His brothers had gone up, then He also went up to the feast, not openly, but as it were in secret. Then the Jews sought Him at the feast, and said, "Where is He?" And there was much murmuring among the people concerning Him. Some said, "He is good." Others said, "No, on the contrary, He deceives the people." However, no one spoke openly of Him for fear of the Jews.
So we are looking at a very tense situation, especially from Jesus' point of view, because they were looking to kill Him. They were trying to trap Him into something where they could bring charges against Him and so He needed to take things a little bit more slowly. And so He decides ultimately, after His discussion with His brothers, that He is not going up to the feast, not immediately. And in this discussion that He has with His brothers, they give Him some advice. They said, "Hey, if You want to be a celebrity, if you want to make Yourself known, be known by more people, You ought to do this. The feast is a perfect place to have a lot of people see you."
John immediately tells us their advice is wrong by commenting that "even His brothers did not believe in Him." So their advice was very worldly. You know, it was like, "Hey, go on up there. Take advantage of Your popularity, You're in this to become someone, right? You want everybody to know You. You want to gain a following, don't you? Give the people what they want. Give them more miracles, give them more healings. Heal somebody of this, that, and the other thing. Heal a leper." It was, like I said, a very worldly, carnal viewpoint. They were telling Him, urging Him, to be self-centered, to make it all about Him.
But it is interesting how He replies to this. His reply is about proper timing. "My time has not yet come, but your time is always ready." He was the one everybody was wanting to see, but He turns His back on His brothers and said, "It's your time now. Go have fun at the feast." I do not know, maybe I am looking at that wrong, but He was saying, "No, this isn't the right time for that sort of thing." I am sure He was thinking this. He had inspired Solomon to write these words about 1,000 years before about everything has its season, right? Let us go back to Ecclesiastes 3. We are going to read the first 11 verses.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-11 To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven: A time to be born, a time to die; a time to plant, a time to pluck what is planted; a time to kill, a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to gain, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to throw away; a time to tear, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
What profit has the worker from that in which he labors? I have seen the God-given task with which the sons of men are to be occupied. He [that is, God has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end.
Let us think about this for a few minutes. Jesus is drawing on Solomon's wisdom here. Whereas men, seeing an opportunity to make hay while the sun shines, want to plunge right ahead and get all that they can, Jesus, on the other hand, being far wiser and more spiritually attuned to God's timetable, perceives that His time has not come. It is not His time to die. It is not the time of His disciples to mourn. It is a time to keep working, but it is a time to lie low. At least for a little while. Going to the Feast in Jerusalem in triumph He knew would speed matters up too much. It would be too soon. It would be the wrong season. It would not be anywhere near Passover.
Notice how Solomon ends the section that we read; that God has made everything fit beautifully in its appropriate time. That is how the New English translation has it. (or the NET Bible) Or how about my own personal paraphrase of this: "God times everything beautifully." It was not time. It was not His time to suffer and die. That time would come because it was part of God's plan. But the Feast of Tabernacles has a different meaning. It does not have the meaning of the Suffering Servant who has come to sacrifice His life for his people and to bring them salvation.
No, the Feast of Tabernacles is different. It has other meanings. And if He would go down to Jerusalem and rile up the Jews, He would throw everything off. The timing of the great plan of God's salvation would go off the rails. It was not right. It was not a good time. But why would He suffer and die? Well, the answer to that question is, as He goes on in His answer to His brothers, is that the world is evil. He understood that the world hates Christ and it hates Him because He points out its wickedness. He does not have to do anything but appear and He makes people shudder because of their own sinfulness. When He showed a bit of His glory to the disciple Peter, Peter said, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord!"
Jesus was not one of those people who normally could just walk through a crowd and not draw any attention. Now, there were a few times when He used His abilities to sneak out of a place when they were picking up stones to cast at Him. But normally He was the kind of person, even though as Isaiah tells us, He had no beauty that we would desire Him, but He was a magnetic, charismatic person and He attracted attention and people would follow Him. But they hated Him. His ministry was a shining light on the difference between Him and the world.
Mostly the ones who got His ire and the ones who took most umbrage to the things that He said and did were the Jewish leadership and they were already—because of His "Eat My flesh and drink My blood," "I am the bread of life" sermon that He gave—circling like wolves and they were looking for a chance to take Him down. All they needed was the slightest provocation, as we will see, and they would send the guards after Him, they would try to arrest Him.
So holding off attending the Feast of Tabernacles, even just a few days, would be enough to bring the boiling pot back to a simmer. Let the first few days of the Feast go by when everybody was all excited. "Oh, Jesus is going to be here. What kind of miracles is He going to do? What's He going to preach about?" And when He did not show and they were looking around for Him, "He's not here." Well, after a few days, all the fervor would kind of start to dampen a bit and He could come in secretly, it says here, and things would be calmer—even if just barely calmer. It was better than the heightened anxiety and the heightened expectations that were there at the beginning of the Feast.
We see here in John 7 that at the beginning of the Feast, that is what happened. People spoke among themselves wondering where He was, but it was publicly quiet after a few days, which was enough for Jesus' purposes, but it would get ramped up soon enough.
So what I am going to do here as we go through each of these sections, I am going to give you a takeaway, a Feast of Tabernacles take away for each section so that you can get an idea of the theme that is coming out here in this section and think about how it applies to the Feast or how it applies to the Millennium or in our preparations for the Millennium.
My takeaway on this section is that the Feast of Tabernacles is a time to get in sync with God. To remind ourselves of God's purpose, of His plan, of how He is working things out bit by bit, moving things in His sovereignty to a point where He can send His Son. Humans, even Jesus as a human, actually, even Jesus now, must live on His timetable, on the Father's timetable, not ours. We have great expectations that the end will come soon, that Jesus will return. But what we think does not matter one wit, but we have to have faith that God will bring it when He chooses to bring it—in His time. So the takeaway is the Feast of Tabernacles is a time to get in sync with God.
Let us go on to the next section, which is a bit shorter.
John 7:14-19 Now about the middle of the feast Jesus went up to the temple and taught. [This is what the people had expected and here He shows up about the middle of the Feast.] And the Jews marveled, saying, "How does this Man know letters, having never studied?" Jesus answered them and said, "My doctrine is not Mine, but His who sent Me. If anyone wants to do His will, he shall know concerning the doctrine, whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him. Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?"
Sounds like a few non-sequiturs in there, but they are not.
My impression of what happens here in verse 14 is that Jesus made an effort to find a way into the Temple precincts to teach His disciples without causing a stir. Remember, He was trying to get on God's timetable here. He did not want the Jews to arrest Him before the time so He did whatever He could to make sure that He was as under the radar as He could be. That did not last very long, but at least He was not coming in and doing something spectacular, like driving things out of the Temple with a whip made of cords or anything like that. But He came in and did His job quietly among His own that were following Him.
But the Jewish authorities had been watching for Him and so they sent representatives to hear what He had to say. They were always trying to keep tabs on what He was saying, what He was doing, because remember they were trying to entrap Him and Jesus knew they were trying to entrap Him. And so they played kind of a cat and mouse game among themselves. Anyway, they came to hear Him speak and they were astounded at His teaching, at His breadth of knowledge and His inspired teaching, the way He delivered what He had to say. You remember at the end of Matthew 7, that people were astounded at His teaching because of His authority. He would preach the gospel, preach the doctrine of God as if He knew what He was talking about. And He did!
So they asked these questions. "How could this Man know so much not having the "right" teachers?" is what that actually means. See, they thought that they were the ones that had the treasury of knowledge and they were the ones that gave it to their disciples. Yet this Man from Galilee, no less, Nazareth, was coming and teaching doctrines that they thought only they knew about and only they could teach and only they could pass on to their disciples. It is like saying, "How can this Man, this country bumpkin, this hick from way up north, how could He be so conversant with the Old Testament without going through our system?" It was an attempt to undermine Him by questioning His credentials. He does not even have a degree in theology. How could He talk that way? He is just spouting His private opinions. He does not have any credibility.
Their statement here, they frame it as a question but it is actually a statement that reveals both their astonishment at the way He spoke and a great deal of envy. It may show a lot of resentment too because they hated being upstaged by a common upstart. That is how they saw Him. They saw Him as someone who was trying to come into their territory and take their ball and kick them out. They saw their livelihoods as endangered, they saw their agreements with the Romans in danger. They thought they would lose their wealth, they would lose their position, because what Jesus was saying was so unworldly.
Now Jesus hears their question, as He would. The Temple area is not that big. I am sure they were fairly close to Him. And so what He does is respond very simply to their question. He says, "My teaching is not original to Me. It comes from God the Father who sent Me." He says, "I do God's will." And that, doing God's will, verifies its divine source and nature." I do not think they were ready for that kind of an answer. They were trying to get in a tit-for-tat with Him about credentials and He just goes right above them and says, "Well, it's not Mine. It's My Father's. I just do what He tells Me. I say what He gives to Me, and because I do what He says and I follow the doctrine that I teach, well, that should show you the Source and that Source is true."
His answer assumes a personal relationship with the Father. Like They talked every day—and They did! It assumes that there was a constant communication between the Father and the Son and the Son respected the Father so much that He did everything that the Father told Him to do. And He said everything that the Father told Him to say. And so because of this, because of His perfect alignment with the Father and His perfect obedience to the Father, He was guiltless. He was blameless. It was true. Look at Him. He was doing everything that His Father told Him to do and there was no sin. So that must mean that what He is saying is actually from the Father. It is the truth.
Now, we are not told to think of this in terms of what the Pharisees were doing, what the Jewish authorities were doing. Where did their doctrine come from? What were their actions like? How obedient were they? What did their lives look like? How much dirty dealing and corruption did they do? This was black versus white. And Jesus says, "I'm just doing what My Dad told Me to do" and they did not have any answer because it was true.
Also there is one thing in this reply that you can see there. It is implied rather than stated outright. But it is a warning that is implied in His statement that, if they rejected the teaching that He was giving, that came from the Father, they were rejecting both the teaching and the Father. And that would not end well.
Verses 17 and 18, let us read these again.
John 7:17-18 "If anyone wants to do His will, He shall know concerning the doctrine [the teaching], whether it is from God or whether I speak on My own authority. He who speaks from himself seeks his own glory, but He who seeks the glory of the One who sent Him is true, and no unrighteousness is in Him."
These two verses stipulate how a person can evaluate whether Jesus' message is true or not. Number one, this is verse 17, one must have a proper attitude, desiring to believe God and do His will. The second part is that one must have the proper motivation and that motivation is to bring glory to God. That is verse 18. We can put it in one hyphenated word. We have to be God-centered, not self-centered. Selfish attitudes and ulterior motives will blind a person to the truth and any accurate evaluation of it. One must truly want to know the truth, believe the truth, and practice the truth.
This is why commentators, you know the ones who write these nice thick volumes of commentary on Scripture, have such a hard time explaining the plain truth of Scripture. And this is why they get a lot of stuff wrong. Because they do not have the right attitude and they do not have the right motivation. They often do not want to follow God's instructions because they see it as a burden, not freedom. So they reject things like obedience to God's law, keeping the holy days, keeping the Sabbath. They do not want to do that because they want to be free, as they see it. Whereas we know that those things are freeing because it opens up salvation to us.
And their motivations are not to glorify God. Their motivations are to sell books or to be the first to suggest a particular interpretation of a verse in Scripture or a lot of times it is to garner the praise of their peers or to be seen as someone who has is very wise, theologically wise. We can put this in a couple of words too. It is called intellectual vanity because a lot of these theologians that write commentaries, if you ever looked at their names, it has got a lot of alphabet soup after it. And the more degrees they have, to them is, if you can get one more degree on your name than a rival, that is great.
I mean, look at I John 2, verses 3 through 6. Now we are still talking about here the right attitude and the right motivation. Jesus says this is how you know the truth. I do not know if you remember but many blue moons ago I did a sermon called "We Know" and I went through the "we knows" of I John. It is an interesting little study and I asked the question, "Do we know?" John says we know, John says we should know, but do we know? But this is one of them. I think it is the first in the book.
I John 2:3-6 Now by this we know that we know Him, if we keep His commandments. He who says, "I know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him. He who says he abides in Him ought himself also to walk just as He walked.
What have we seen here in these four verses here in I John 2? This is a theme of his book. This is why this is the first "we know" in I John. What he has said here in so many words in this Johannine way that he speaks, that he writes, he is saying we know the truth because we practice it. That is how you know the truth. You are willing to practice it. You want to please God, your motivation is to do His will. And if you go ahead and practice the truth, we come to realize over an amount of time that it is true because it works. Because we have strengthened our relationship with God, we have strengthened our relationships with other people, our lives have turned around, we are not sinning like we used to, and on and on it goes.
But the way to know the truth of God is to have the right attitude and the right motivation. And both of those come out in practice, in doing. Not just hearing but in doing.
Now let us go to Revelation 1, verses 1 through 3. Same author.
Revelation 1:1-3 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave Him to show His servants—things which must shortly take place. And He sent and signified it by His angel to His servant John, who bore witness to the word of God, and to the testimony of Jesus Christ, and to all things that he saw. [here is the verse for you] Blessed is he who reads and those who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep those things which are written in it; for the time is near.
So, in light of what we have been seeing in John 7, he is saying now is the time to have the right attitude and the right motivation to keep the truth, to practice the truth, to grow in the truth. Because as I said last night, the truth is one of those things that we are going to have to hold on tightly to as the end draws near. The truth will be a great comfort as things get worse and worse. And you may be one of just a very tiny fraction of people on this earth who have the truth to cling to.
Back to verse 19 in John 7. Verse 19 is a "proof in the pudding" statement.
John 7:19 "Did not Moses give you the law, yet none of you keeps the law? Why do you seek to kill Me?"
Jesus uses the law given through Moses as an example of how this principle works. They could have understood the law if they had kept it! But they refused to practice it. Instead they practiced their oral law and their traditions and the additions that they had made and all the things that they had stuck onto it from paganism as they had gone through Babylon and Persia and the Greek Empire, and now, Rome. Those are the things they were actually enforcing on their fellow Jews. And Jesus says later in Matthew 23 that they did not lift one finger to take the burden off any of their people.
What He says is if they were truly keeping the law, they would not be trying to kill Him, but their trying to kill Him was proof that they were not keeping the law. What is commandment number 6? "You shall do no murder." But they already hated Him. And then they want just wanted His blood to cap it all off.
So His final question in this passage ending in verse 19, directed at the Jewish authorities, gets right to the heart of the matter. They were not trying to understand the truth of God's revelation. They did not have the right attitude. They did not have the right motivation. Instead, they were simply baiting Him to eliminate a rival. They would never grasp the truth under their present attitude and motivation because one way or another, it would end in death and that is not God's way.
Feast of Tabernacles takeaway: the Feast of Tabernacles is a time of learning and the best way to learn the truth is to have the right attitude and the right motivation, that is, to desire to do His will and to glorify God. Anything else leads to destruction. So we are not only to take in the knowledge, we are to start applying it as soon as possible. That is where we will get the understanding. That is when it will become ingrained in our minds, in our character.
Let us move on to John 7, verses 20 through 24. He had just said, "Why do you seek to kill Me?"
John 7:20-24 The people answered and said, "You have a demon. Who is seeking to kill You?" [They obviously did not understand. They did not catch the drift of what He had been trying to tell them.] Jesus answered and said to them, "I did one work and you all marvel. [I did one good deed. I did one healing and you all marvel.] Moses therefore gave you circumcision (not that it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and you circumcise a man on the Sabbath. If a man received circumcision on the Sabbath, so that the law of Moses should not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made a man completely well on the Sabbath? Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment."
Jesus is always like 15 steps ahead of them. Whatever they could throw at Him, He comes back with something that thoroughly confounds them, and part of it has to do with what we went through just a minute ago. They would not understand because they could not keep the law. They did not have the right attitude. They did not have the right motivation. They were thinking entirely on a carnal level.
This section that we just read, verses 20 through 24, has John 5:1-15 in the background. This is the one work that He did. This is Jesus' healing of the man at the pool of Bethesda on the Sabbath. Remember, He had him carry his little cot or whatever and go stand in the water or go bathe himself in the water and he was completely healed. Let us go right back and look though at John 5, starting in verse 15. He has been made well.
John 5:15-16 The man departed and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. [Oh, Jesus is in for it now.] For this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.
Oh, this makes John 7:19-20 perfectly understandable because they were seeking to kill Him. But the people did not necessarily know that their authorities were trying to kill Him. So their response, "Who is seeking to kill You?" is understandable. They were not in all the councils of the scribes and the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin and all that. So they said, "You have a demon. You're imagining things, you're seeing persecutors everywhere, behind every tree." And so they asked the question, "Who is seeking to kill You?" But He does not answer that directly.
John 5:17-23 But Jesus answered them, "My Father has been working until now, and I have been working." Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill Him, because He not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. Then Jesus answered and said to them, "Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these, that you may marvel. For as the Father raises the dead and gives life to them, even so the Son gives life to whom He will. For the Father judges no one, but has committed all judgment to the Son, that they should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent Him."
Now, I do not know how many of the Jews who heard Him in John 5 were also there when He was talking about this in John 7, but perhaps the Pharisees, or whoever they sent to spy on Him, had been there. And so in a sense, He is almost continuing the diatribe against them when we get to John 7, verse 21. Because He reaches back to that incident and says, "This is all tied together, fellas. It was that thing that started you trying to kill Me so rabidly. And then I said that My Father and I work, and it made you even more anxious and more willing to kill Me." He says, "This is what I'm talking about. You're not judging correctly. You've got things all screwed up."
So when Jesus replies in John 7:21 He almost entirely ignores, actually, He does pretty much ignore, the Sabbath question. He touches on a little bit, but He actually strikes at the other contention, that He was the Son of God the Father. That is the big one. His defense is that He works the works of God because that is what His Father does. He would not be a good Son if He did not do what the Father did. Remember where God says (I believe it is in Isaiah 1) that His children (He is speaking of the children of Israel), do not even know Him. Even as an ox or a mule knows the barn that they are supposed to go in, you know, they know their own crib, but His children did not know Him. And that reality went all the way down to the time of Jesus and the Jews then.
They really did not know the God of the Old Testament either. So they were always thinking along different lines. And the reason we could say that is because they were not doing what the law said. They were not doing what they had been taught out of God's Word. And He doubles down on this, Jesus does, and He says, "This is going to get to the point where I'm going to resurrect the dead because that's what My Father does. I do everything that My Father does because I love Him, and He gives Me good instructions, and I want to please Him. I want to do His will. And so I teach these things, I do these things, because that's what God wants. God is My Father. He works and I work."
What He is telling them is, there is not much difference between the Father and the Son. And so the Jews, back in John 5, they got it. They understood that He was saying that He was equal to the Father. And that was absolute blasphemy to them. Because they could not see that He was not just a mere man. That is how they thought of Him. Remember, country bumpkin, upstart, without education. That is how they saw Him. They did not see Him as God in the flesh. They were blind to that, they could not see it.
But He was saying that He was acting out on earth what His Father had personally told Him and commissioned Him to do, and He would do even greater things. In fact, the Father trusts the Son so much because He does nothing but the Father's will, that He has given the Son the office of Eternal Judge. That is what He told Him at the end of 5:22. And so because He held the office of Eternal Judge, it made Jesus worthy of the same honor that they would give the Father.
What a response! He did not back down. I mean, we would say today, shots fired! I hate that image of Jesus as this wilting violet or whatever, more like a white lily. You know, they always dress Him in these white robes and they make Him look really weak and pallid and look like He has not eaten in a few weeks, He does back to back 40 days and 40 nights of fasting. But that is not how He was! Our God as He walked on earth was a man who stood up to challenges right and left. It is almost like He dared them at times. "Okay, take your best shot. I've got an answer."
I used to, when I was younger, look for specific statements where Jesus was saying that He was God. Because it is actually a theological question. They, the theologians, say, well, He never really ever said that He was God, you know, citing this text or this source. And, you know, growing up in the church, I always thought, I know I have seen them in the Bible, in the gospels, where He is telling them that He is God! And you know what? He tells us in the gospels just about on every page that He is God. There may not be very many actual statements of, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" that is even in there.
But you just have to see what Jesus is actually saying. And it is proof positive to me or proof negative actually, that these people do not have the Spirit of God. They cannot understand that He was constantly revealing Himself to be God. Even in the gospels whose themes are not like John's. John's main theme is to reveal God in Jesus Christ. I mean, that is how it starts. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." And constantly, not only in John, but in the other three synoptic gospels, He is telling them that He is God. Only God can say these things, only God can do these things. But they are blind. Like all the world, they cannot see it. They do not have eyes to see or ears to hear. And so, as we heard this morning, it was Isaiah's commission to blind their eyes and stuff their ears so that they would not see and they would not hear—and that is how they remained for thousands of years until now.
Back in John 7. Ignoring that you have a demon insult, Jesus uses the John 5 event to accuse the Jewish authorities of having a sinful, hateful attitude. Again. They never seem to get over that one. And because they had this hateful, sinful attitude, they had faulty judgment. They could not judge things properly because their hate was blinding them to seeing the truth. They did not have the right attitude. And again, they did not have the proper motivation.
Now, His reference to circumcision here is an illustration of their skewed abilities in judging. They had judged this very poorly. They allowed circumcision. I mean, think of it. Circumcision is a work or an act of destruction of the flesh. It is literally cutting off flesh and they allowed this on the Sabbath. They allowed the mohel to do the circumcision on the Sabbath, but they would not allow healing.
Think of the difference between circumcision, which is a destructive act of cutting of the flesh, to healing, which is a positive, constructive, life-giving work. They chose destruction in their judgment rather than life and construction. And He says here, the law of circumcision really is not even a Mosaic law but one that went even further back, to God's relationship with the patriarchs. So, what He is telling them in all these words is that the Jewish authorities had completely missed the deeper covenantal personal relationship meaning of circumcision. That the person was being bound to God to walk in a blameless relationship with Him. That is exactly what He told Abraham, "Be you blameless." And then He gives the circumcision covenant.
Instead, in their skewed judgment, they considered circumcision a rite to bind men to keep the law of Moses and to keep them loyal to them, to the scribes and the Pharisees. I mean, look at Matthew 23. Jesus really cleared the air in this chapter. Probably felt good after doing it, getting all that off His chest. But look at verse 13.
Matthew 23:13 "But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you shut up the kingdom of heaven against men; for you neither go in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in."
They were roadblocks, roadblocks on the path to the Kingdom of God. And doing that with their faulty judgment would keep them out of it. Look at verse 15.
Matthew 23:15 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much the son of hell as yourselves."
Ooh, not very nice, but it was true. They loved having converts from the Gentiles who would go through all their rings, jump through all their rings, including circumcision, to become a Jew. And going through that process made those people even more rabid than the Jews themselves.
Matthew 23:23-24 "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done, without leaving the others undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel!"
You could see how their judgment was off. They liked to be real picky about small things but left all the big things completely undone. They could handle making sure everybody tithed exactly one-tenth of their increase. But they could not figure out how to be nice to their next door neighbor. What is more important? Both, Jesus says, should be done. But put the weight of your actions, of your desires, on loving one another, not on being so meticulous that it takes all your time so you cannot do anything else that is actually good or helps your relationship with God.
That is why Jesus in John 7:24 says, "judge with righteous judgment." It was a hallmark of His character, a hallmark of His teaching as Messiah.
Let us go back to Isaiah 11. If you want an insight into the character of the Son of God, it is shown here.
Isaiah 11:1-4 There shall come forth a Rod from the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of its roots. The Spirit of the Lord will rest upon Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. His delight is in the fear of the Lord, and He shall not judge by the sight of His eyes, nor decide by the hearing of His ears; but with righteousness He shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; He shall strike the earth with the rod of His mouth, and with the breath of His lips He shall slay the wicked.
Because He has the fear of the Lord, because His aim is to please His Father, He can both judge the meek and help the poor. And He can also strike terror into the guilty and bring wrath upon sinners. See, He judges with righteous judgment. He has perfect judgment because His doctrine is not His but the Father's, and He follows it faithfully.
So He cared about what God thought, what was most beneficial to others, and He accomplished God's will. In everything He did He prioritized God's aims and purposes. He looked beyond the superficial. He looked beyond the easy answer or the judgment that would receive the most acclaim from the people. That did not come into His mind. So in the healing in John 5, the priority was the complete healing of the man. That is what He saw as God's will. That was a righteous action, a positive constructive work that would do God's will.
It superseded the Sabbath law which the Jews could not understand because the Sabbath law was to them pretty much the highest priority. Because the breaking of the Sabbath back a few centuries before had gotten them into big trouble and they ended up in Babylon and their temple had been ruined, torn down, and Jerusalem basically razed. But Jesus saw love toward neighbor as the higher law—higher than the Sabbath, higher than strict ritual Sabbath observance. And as a matter of fact, we can put it another way, giving life in healing is an act of Sabbath. That is, what does Sabbath mean? It is giving rest and restoration. And so the Sabbath was a perfect time for a healing, but the Jews could not understand it because they saw the Sabbath as a burden and made it a heavy burden on everyone. It was just a matter of strict obedience to the rituals of the Sabbath.
So what He did in John 5 in healing the man is that He did God's will and work and He was entirely justified because it was the right thing to do. It was an act of love toward the man who was healed and it made Him whole. Is that not what God is trying to do with all of us? To heal us of our sins and make us whole?
What is the Feast takeaway here? The Feast of Tabernacles is a time to align our judgment with God's will and God's work which is symbolic of God's rest.
Let us tackle this last section here.
John 7:25-31 Then some of them from Jerusalem said, "Is this not He whom they seek to kill? [Yes, people knew.] But look, He speaks boldly, and they say nothing to Him. Do the rulers know indeed that this is truly the Christ? [Have they changed their minds since John 5?] However, we know where this Man is from; but when the Christ comes, no one will know where He is from. [notice Jesus' reaction] Then Jesus cried out, as He taught in the temple [this must have really irked Him that they were saying this], saying, "You both know Me, and you know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. But I know Him, for I am from Him, and He sent Me." Therefore they sought to take Him; but no one laid a hand on Him, because His hour had not yet come. And many of the people believed in Him, and said, "When the Christ comes, will He do more signs than these which this Man has done?"
We can see here that the Jews were quite concerned about the Messiah and quite confused about Him. The crowd is reacting to the Jewish authorities' passivity despite Jesus' bold statements that He is making here. Most of those statements that He was making they considered blasphemous because He asserted a relationship with God that made the Father His equal. They wondered if the Pharisees, the Jewish authorities, had privately concluded that Jesus was the Messiah and so they were backing off. I mean, the question is kind of like, "Has His teaching finally convinced them?"
Now that is kind of how it is. In Greek, the wording is a tentative question, but they dismissed the question quickly because of the popular notion that the Messiah would have mysterious origins and come suddenly and unexpectedly, and they knew Jesus was from Nazareth. So they knew His origins, they knew that He currently lived in Capernaum. So they knew even His recent origins and He had been preaching for a while. Everybody knew Him. Thousands had gone to see Him so it could not have been Him, could not be the Messiah. He has been around too long. We know where He is from. If you want to check out Mark 13:21-22 you will see there that this notion was widespread.
There are two occurrences of the word "know" in verse 27. "However, we know where this Man is from, but when the Christ comes, no one knows where He is from." These are actually two different Greek words. One is oida and the other is ginosko. The first one, oida, has the sense of mental knowledge. "We know where He is from." We have heard about where He is from and we know that to be true. While ginosko is experiential knowledge (that is the second one here). "No one knows where He is from." That is, they will not have any experience of the real Messiah when He comes.
See, what they are saying is we have had a great deal of experience with this Man, Jesus of Nazareth. So the popular notion that no one knows where He is from when He comes does not fit. The difference here is that the people were sure that the information about Jesus' origins was factual. But when the Messiah arrived, no one would be able to discern or observe where He came from. The sense is, "Oh, when Messiah comes, He'll just appear," out of thin air like, poof! There is the Messiah. That was the popular notion that they had.
So when it says that Jesus cried out, He is making a public announcement to everybody in the Temple just so that He would set the record straight. He wanted to put them all on the same page here. So we can read what He says as something like, "So you know Me and where I'm from?" Then He says, "But I was sent by another, the true and faithful One. My source is God Himself. And you've proved you do not know Him." If they had really known the Father as they thought they did, as they claimed they did, they would have accepted the Son. But they were trying to kill Him for asserting that very same relationship with the Father, that He was the Son of the Father.
Jesus is saying that He knew the Father because They had spent long ages together. That is exactly how John opens the book. John 1:1, as I quoted earlier, and from the Father He had personally accepted the mission to be their Savior. He was saying, "This relationship is so long and so deep and so unbreakable that," as He later says to His disciples, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. Do you really think you know Me?"
Now, this statement made the Jewish authorities angry again. They must have been, you know, just ready to blow up by this time. So they desired to capture and kill Him and their plan did not succeed because the timing was not right. It says that right there, "His hour had not yet come." At this point, even though Jesus had tried to tamp down all the the fervor about killing Him, this time, God's providence stepped to the fore and ensured His safety. However, some, we find here, accepted what He said, especially since His many astonishing miracles had corroborated His word. He had proved who He was to some people.
What is the Feast takeaway of this section? Our High Priest and His message have their source in God the Father. Jesus says that He is the truth. You can find that in John 14:6. He also says in His High Priestly prayer in John 17:17, that His Father's word is truth. So what we can take away then is that we can trust the teaching we receive from the Father and the Son and that teaching is revealed in His work.
Let us conclude in Revelation 3. We will read two verses, verse 7 and verse 14. These are the letters to the seven churches, the last two, number 6 and number 7, the church in Philadelphia and the church in Laodicea. Let us just read verse 7. Notice the wording, notice the things that are pointed out to these two churches in verse 7 and verse 14. These are what Christ says about Himself. These are the things that He wants us to understand here in these two letters about Him.
Revelation 3:7 "And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write, 'These things says He who is holy, He who is true, "He who has the key of David, He who opens and no one shuts, and shuts and no one opens."
Revelation 3:14 "And to the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write, 'These things says the Amen [the So Be It, the I Agree], the Faithful and True Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God [or we could say the Source or Origin of the creation of God]."
He is saying He is Creator. He has all the power of the Creator God.
So in the last two letters to the church, there is a clear emphasis on things like His holiness, His trueness, His faithfulness, His power and authority. In a time when everything is suspect, everything is questionable, nothing is believed to be absolute truth and trustworthy, and good, we need to be assured that what Jesus says and promises is true, is believable, and good for bringing us to complete salvation.
So as the time draws near and the world worsens and the enemies of God seem to proliferate here and abroad, we need have no fear. We can trust both the Revelator and His revelation in Scripture, and cling to it—and move forward.
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