Feast: Jesus and the Feast (Part Two): Belief in the Spirit
#FT23-04
Richard T. Ritenbaugh
Given 03-Oct-23; 68 minutes
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transcript:
In my last sermon, we reviewed the first half of John 7 for indications of what Jesus Christ Himself had on His mind during the only Feast of Tabernacles during His ministry that the gospel writers highlighted. In fact, it was probably His last Feast on earth, probably AD 30, if we have got our chronology correct, during what is called by scholars His late Judean ministry.
As things were getting much closer to the time He was going to die, He had a lot to reveal and accomplish in that short amount of time, only about six months, and John 7 gives us these indications. But as in most of what John says, we have to search diligently and think them through. He had a way of writing that was so simple and it is almost like you do not want to understand what he said. It is just right there. Just look at I John chapter 4. I could have picked any verse out of this book, but, "He who does not love does not know God, for God is love." How simple is that? Verse 14, "We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world." Just very simple sentences—subject, verb, object—but they are so deep, or we make them deep because of our misunderstandings.
So that is what I have tried to do in these sermons on John 7. And I will also give a little bit of John 8 on the Last Great Day, or actually on the Eighth Day, and just try to explain some of these things as best I can.
On the holy day, the first day of the Feast, I gave you four takeaways from John 7:1-31 and they apply to our observance of the Feast of Tabernacles right now. They should help us get the most out of this lengthy appointed time, spiritually; not physically, but we need to get the most out of it spiritually. I will reiterate some of these things that I spoke about in the first sermon, specifically the four takeaways that we mentioned then.
The first takeaway from the first half of John 7 is that the Feast of Tabernacles is a time to get in sync with God. I mean, we found out that even Jesus had to live on His timetable and He figured out that it was not proper for Him to come to the Feast early and to be there right as it started with all the hoopla of the first day of the Feast because there was the possibility that it would speed up the time table and the Jews would arrest Him six months before the time and that would have caused a lot of problems. So Jesus had to tell His brothers, "I'm not going quite yet. I'll be there later, maybe, maybe not." And so He ends up coming in the midst of the Feast, it says.
So our takeaway is that our everyday worldly schedule, we have jobs, we have to go get groceries, we have to do this, that, and the other thing, that has to take a backseat to what God is doing. We have to learn how to get in sync with His appointed times, His purpose, His plan, make sure that we are following Him, not going off on some tangent somewhere and expecting Him to follow us. So we have got to get in sync with God and this Feast of Tabernacles is a good time to begin doing that or to get re-in-sync because we have gotten off onto a tangent somewhere.
The second takeaway is that the Feast of Tabernacles is a time of learning and the best way to learn the truth is to have the right attitudes and motivations. We must desire from the bottom of our heart to do His will and to glorify Him in everything that we do. Anything else leads to destruction. Anything that is not of God is eventually going to end in sin and sin ends in destruction and death. So if we are at the Feast to play, and I know we do a lot of playing, it is not supposed to be the first thing that we do.
We will go out on the lawn today and do some more playing. But if that is our only reason for being here or even merely to relax because you have been doing your job so diligently at home and you are tired and you would like to come to the Feast to kind of let down a little bit, that is not necessarily the right attitude that you have to have. Because if you are here to learn from God, you cannot be playing other things. You cannot be too relaxed because you are probably going to miss something. You will not benefit from this Feast as much as we are here to learn from God.
So this one, the Feast is a time of learning, and we have got to make that our priority.
The third takeaway is that the Feast is a time to align our judgment with God's will and with His work. Remember, the Feast of Tabernacles is the festival that has to do most with God's rest, the coming rest of God, and we have to align ourselves so that we can enter that rest. We have to align our judgment with God's will and His work because we have to begin making decisions that are godly as we go through our lives, our converted lives. And if we are not aligned with God's will and what His work is, we are going to end up making bad decisions. We are going to make decisions that are not aligned with what He wants to happen. So we need to make sure that we do, we align our judgment with God's work and will.
Now the instruction that we are learning here at the Feast is designed to teach us discernment and wisdom in judgment so that we can begin to speak and to act as God does. And righteous judgment is only possible if we practice it in our lives. We cannot just have head knowledge. We have to have experiential knowledge so we can begin right here with decisions that we have to make here at the Feast. Oftentimes there are decisions like, well, I can go out to dinner with my friends and have a good time or I know that the person in the room next to me has been sick and maybe they need something. What decision are you going to do? Are you going to highlight your own fun or are you going to say, well, I am going to serve my neighbor. Maybe they can both be done, but we have to sacrifice a little bit of our time to do both. So we can make those decisions here doing what is good and right, giving service to one another, and then we can take that same mindset home and do it there as well.
The fourth takeaway is that the Feast of Tabernacles reveals that our High Priest and His message have their source in God the Father. We saw that Christ proclaims Himself as the truth. That is in John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." And then He declares that the Father's word is truth. That is in His High Priestly prayer in John 17:17, "Thy word is truth." We can trust the teaching we receive from Them, we can trust what They are telling us in Their word.
Sometimes men do not get it quite right. I am sure I have taught things that are not totally in line with what God meant. I hope He forgives me of those things, and I know that He does, because He is faithful and will correct me if I am wrong. But we can always go to the source, God's Word, and find the absolute truth that we need. So we can trust the teaching we receive from Them. And with that trust comes obedience. If we trust Them, knowing who They are, the great Supreme Being of all the universe and His Son, and the word that they revealed to us through the Bible, well, who else are you going to follow? Who better to follow, who better to obey? So, if we know deep in ourselves that this way, this truth, the revelation of God is absolutely correct and will bring us to the place where it is best for us, that is, His Kingdom, then we will obey what it says.
This morning, then, we will tackle the last half of John 7, which is dominated by Christ's announcement of the Holy Spirit in verses 37 through 39. But it is not just that one, there are three other points to consider in this chapter and we will do just that. Much of this chapter, the last half of the chapter, deals with the world's confusion about Christ and what God is doing. The Jews were hopelessly confused about who Christ was and what He was here to do. And our observance of the Feast of Tabernacles with some of these things and others that we have learned at other times, should help us to see those things more clearly, who Christ is and what He came to do.
Let us jump into John 7 here.
John 7:32 The Pharisees heard the crowd murmuring these things [The crowd was saying, "Who else but the Messiah could do these type of things, preach this way, and heal this way, and cast out demons?] concerning Him, and the Pharisees and the chief priests sent officers to take Him.
This was the thing that Jesus was trying to avoid because He did not want things to progress too quickly. And so the Jews, they were starting to get a bit envious here. Jesus was pulling in the crowds because He was speaking the way that He did and doing miracles, obviously. And so they were saying, "Oh! We are losing our grip. These people will go over to Him."
John 7:33-36 Then Jesus said to them [I just marvel every time I read through the gospels how Jesus always knew the right thing to say. And He could confound people with the simplest truth like this.], "I shall be with you a little while longer; and then I go to Him who sent Me. You will seek Me and not find Me, and where I am you cannot come." Then the Jews said among themselves, "Where does He intend to go that we shall not find Him? Does He intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What is this thing that He said, 'You will seek Me and not find Me, and where I am you cannot come'?"
Because they were fearful of losing their position, the Jewish authorities sent the Temple police to arrest Jesus and stop His mouth and His work, maybe even to kill Him after they arrested Him. But Jesus does not run and hide. He stays there, He faces them. And instead of saying, "Hey guys, it's okay. I'll leave," or anything like that, He says something enigmatically about going to the Father soon, to a place they will not find Him or they cannot even follow Him.
I get this picture, you know, in the cinema of my brain, that these guards come at Him and He says, "Hey, fellas, I'm going to a place where you can't find Me." And they were like, "What does that mean? How could you go somewhere and we could not find you? That's what we do. We find people that the Pharisees do not like and we arrest them. How could You ever evade us? Everybody knows You. Everybody in public would point You out, you leave a trail of healed people and exorcised demons. It wouldn't be hard to find You anywhere. Are you trying to go outside our jurisdiction? Are you going to go all the way to the Dispersion? Are you going to go to Babylon? Maybe Rome, wherever the Jews are that they had dispersed to over the centuries. Where are you going to go that we can't find you? Are you going to go to some Gentile area? Oh, You're going to stick out like a sore thumb there. A Jew amidst all these Gentiles! We could just blind our eyes and find You without any problem. How are You going to go to some place where we can't find You?"
But that little blurb or whatever that He gave them was enough to give them pause to try to figure out what He meant. Again, I imagine them saying, "Okay, let's not start a ruckus here. He just said something that we are supposed to know. We're supposed to have some kind of idea what He meant and we are totally not understanding what He meant. But we do know He said He'll leave soon. So if He's going to leave soon, we won't have to deal with Him and maybe that's a solution to the problem." But this is not something that simple.
Let us go to John 13, over a few pages, verses 31 through 35, because this was on His mind. Obviously, going to the Father was His big goal. He wanted to return back to the throne of God and resume His work in heaven. So it was on His mind and He was telling various groups of people about this, and here we will go through this in John 13 and then we will go to chapter 16 where He tells His disciples the same thing twice during His Passover teaching to them.
John 13:31-35 So, when he had gone out, Jesus said, "Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him. [That was Judas that had gone out to do his betrayal.] If God is glorified in Him [in Jesus], God will also glorify Him in Himself, and glorify Him immediately. Little children, I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I said to the Jews [we just read it in John 7], 'Where I am going, you cannot come,' so now I say to you. A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
So now the objects of His teaching have narrowed to the Twelve and actually now to the Eleven because Judas has left. He was the one with the devil and he was gone now. So once that had happened, once Judas had committed to his course, then it was just the Eleven. And He says, "Okay, the first bit of the final narrative here of what is going to happen has been set, things cannot be stopped from this point on. I have glorified the Father and He's going to glorify Me." So the die is cast, everything is going to happen. And the first thing He tells them then is that I am going away and you cannot come after Me. You will not be able to find Me.
Let us go to John 16 and see the other one. We read this every year at Passover. And I think I understand now why it is written the way it is here because we get the same message in several verses. I mean, just listen to how many times He says, "I'm going away," "you can't find Me." etcetera, etcetera, the same little thing.
John 16:16-22 "A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me, because I go to the Father." Then some of His disciples said among themselves, "What is this that He says to us, 'A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me'; and 'because I go to the Father'?" [two verses, a repetition of the same thing] They said therefore, "What is this that He says, 'A little while'? We do not know what He is saying." Now Jesus knew they desired to ask Him, and He said to them, "Are you inquiring among yourselves what I said. 'A little while, and you will not see Me; and again a little while, and you will see Me'? [Is God trying to get this into our heads here and certainly into His head? That is what, three times we have already heard that same little bit?] Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy. [two more verses] A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. Therefore you now have sorrow; but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you."
So we have this statement being on the forefront of Jesus' mind throughout this final six months of His life. It began with Him telling the Jews that He was going to go away soon and they would not be able to find Him. And then, as the final day came, He was reiterating this to His disciples over and over and over again; that He would go away and they would be sorrowful, but He would come back and they would be joyful. They could not follow Him, not yet. That is for way in the future. But He had to go away because that is what His Father wanted Him to do. And if He would go away to that point, He would be safe. The Jews could not find Him, no one could find Him as humans.
But that going away was for good. It was for good for the disciples. It was for good for the whole world. It was for the good of His plan. This was an integral part of what God wanted Him to do. Once He had given the sacrifice for sin, He had to come back and work with the results. And by going back to the Father and sitting at His right hand, He now had the power to make things happen.
Now thinking like Jews, which they were, the disciples still did not really grasp that He would have to die and to be resurrected and then ascend to the Father. I mean, even afterward, even after they witnessed it all happen. . . I mean, they were there. The women that were with them saw Him go into the tomb. They were there in the morning when He was not in the tomb anymore. Peter and John come running down there and into the area of the tombs and they looked in there, and yeah, the women were right, He was not there. And then He showed Himself to them, "Look at My hands, My feet, check out the wound in My side." Yet, forty days later when He is ascending to heaven in Acts 1:6, they say, "Are You at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?" That is exactly what a Jew would ask. "Okay, You proved Yourself as the Messiah, aren't You now going to kick out the Romans?" Here you go, guys. You thought about the Roman Empire, cultural thing. But that is true. They did not still fully understand why all this had to happen.
Now let us get a key for us here in this. We are looking at this from 2,000 years into the future, looking back on this early time in 31 AD. Let us go back to John 13, and there is a reason why I read the whole section. Because He had told His disciples that He was going away.
John 13:33 "I shall be with you a little while longer. You will seek Me; and as I had said to the Jews, 'Where I am going, you cannot come,' so now I say to you."
I could have stopped there. But the point that He was trying to make is in verses 34 and 35. He was saying, if we want to put it in our terms, this is what you need to understand from this enigmatic statement. This is bottom line on top. That is kind of what He was telling them here. "Look, you guys, you disciples, you have your work to do. You have a job that I'm going to give you after I go away." And what is in 34 and 35 is instruction about what they should prioritize.
John 13:34-35 "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another."
What does this mean? I can put it this way. He says, "Since you cannot come where I am going, love one another as I have loved you. Loving one another is a hallmark of My disciples."
So in John 7, back there, He was telling the Jews that He would be out of their hair in a short while, six months. But (this is not in there), if you think it through this is what you come up with. If He went away, yes, He would not be physically there, but His going away would not solve their problem. He would be powerful when He went away, He would be glorified, and His teaching would continue in His disciples, those who love one another. And what havoc that would wreak on Judea. I mean, it was kind of like a "zing!" It stopped them from taking Him, arresting Him, and whatever they would have done after that.
But He was also telling them in a roundabout way that even if they got rid of Him, they were going to have a time of it because His disciples were going to begin a work after He left, and it would turn the world upside down—and it has—but specifically for us as His disciples, the way we turn the world upside down is counter-punching this culture and that is by loving one another. That is what makes the difference between you as His disciples and the people in the world. They do not love one another. They hate one another and they try to get ahead of everybody. But His disciples would love one another and make a great witness for Him in the world.
So our Feast of Tabernacles takeaway here in this little section in John 7 is that the Feast of Tabernacles is a time when Christ's disciples continue His work by loving one another. We have opportunities to witness that love before the world and display true Christianity at work. We are here to make a witness as His disciples that everybody can see, if they have eyes to see and ears to hear, that we love one another, that we are God's people.
Let us go on to the next one. John 7, verses 37 to 39. This is the the big one, the Spirit announcement.
John 7:37-39 On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, "If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." But this He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those believing in Him would receive; for the Holy Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.
Now, as we have discovered over the past decade or so, this occurred on the last day of the Feast, the seventh day of the Feast, not the Eighth Day. And if you want the proof of that, my dad gave two sermons on that ("John 7:37 Examined"), showing that by the Hebrew calendar, it had to have been the seventh day and not the eighth. But that is all we need on that.
At first, His action here seems surprising, especially from the standpoint of the Pharisees had just sent the Jews to arrest Him. But here He draws attention to Himself by standing up in the midst of thousands of people come to Jerusalem for this ceremony here (we will talk about this in a minute), and He exposes Himself that He was the Christ to this whole congregation of people, the thousands that were there. You would think He would be hiding, but He was not. At this point, He was revealing who He was. And, as we know from other places in Scripture, that He is the one who dispenses the Holy Spirit, so that is why He says, "Come to Me" and you can have the Holy Spirit. So He stands up and He cries out with a loud voice an open invitation to salvation. That is why it is surprising because it was right on the heels of the Jews attempt to arrest Him.
But John left out some background material on this that we need to go over that once we understand that helps to broaden our understanding of what this is all about. So what it was is that traditionally, every Feast, the priest would conduct a water ceremony on the festival's last day, that is, the seventh day. And it was the highlight of the Feast, at least in Jerusalem. That is why it was called "that great day of the feast" because everybody was looking forward to lining the streets and watching the ceremony as it progressed.
So, to the sound of trumpets blaring, a great procession, cheered by thousands of people along the way, it would wind down from the Temple to the pool of Siloam, and there the priest would draw water in golden pitchers and the procession would then return to the Temple where the water would be poured out on the altar while a choir sang Isaiah 12:3, which is, "Therefore with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation."
Now, Jesus watched the spectacle. I do not know how many times He had seen it, but He saw the people's joy in this particular ceremony. But, you know, Jesus is different from everybody else. He saw something far greater. That is, the reality of what this ceremony pictured—something that is far more spectacular, far more joyous. And filled with this emotion and with wanting to save these people, He stood up and shouted, "If anyone desires true spiritual salvation, you can have it abundantly through Me!" The Jews probably had a conniption when He said that. It is kind of like saying you have these measly golden pitchers of water and you pour them out on the altar. But I will give you rivers of living water gushing directly from your innermost being.
John immediately provides the interpretation. What He meant was the water represents the Holy Spirit that believers receive upon belief and repentance and baptism and the laying on of hands. And he says, at this point in history it had not been given to anyone. Just a few, those from the Old Testament, a few prophets, a few kings, few others here and there. So it was quite exclusive. But Jesus was here offering it; if you believe Me, if you come to Me, you can have rivers of living water, not just a few quarts or whatever they could fit in their pitchers. And once Jesus died and ascended to heaven to receive glory, God would open up access to the Spirit to believers of His teaching.
But have you really ever considered what verse 38 actually says? I mean, I know we read it and I know we get an understanding of it. But have you really thought about what He tells them there? Because 37 and 38 say two different things. 37 says, "If any one thirsts, let him come to Me and drink." He is the Source, they have to come to Him to get the living water. But verse 38 says something different. "He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water." That is the receiver, not the Source. Jesus is willing to give a Niagara Falls amount of Holy Spirit from Himself. But He says, those who receive it can have that rivers of living water gushing from them too.
Yes, we can access the Holy Spirit through Christ. But Jesus says in verse 38 that the Spirit will flow out of the believer's heart like living water. It is not something to be contained, it is something to channel and use. And this agrees with several places in Scripture even. We can go back a few pages to chapter 4, verse 14.
John 4:14 [He says to the woman at the well] "But whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a fountain of water springing up into everlasting life."
This is not just "a little dab will do you," that sort of thing. Christ is willing to give it in fullness and we are to then give it in fullness. Interesting.
Let us go back to Isaiah 58, verse 11. And this is only logical because who are we supposed to be becoming like? The Son of Man, Jesus Christ. What does the water do from Him? It flows out in great amounts toward others. Well, if we are supposed to be like Him, it should flow out in great amounts toward others too from us.
Isaiah 58:11 The Lord will guide you continually, and satisfy your soul in drought, and strengthen your bones; you shall be like a watered garden, like a spring of water, whose waters do not fail.
This is in the chapter about fasting. If we have that close relationship with God, and the water, the Spirit is flowing to us, we are well-watered gardens, but it is not supposed to stay there in the garden. It is supposed to, as it says here, spring out of us. The Spirit of God is powerful, it is active, it works. It is not something that is to be hoarded. I do not even know if you can hoard it. So receiving God's Spirit is a wonderful thing. It is a great gift. But Jesus' emphasis is on using it abundantly out of the heart.
Let us go back to the New Testament in Romans 12.
Romans 12:3-8 For I say, through the grace given to me, to everyone who is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, as God has dealt to each one a measure of faith. For as we have many members in one body, but all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us [that is, different gifts that God through Jesus Christ has poured out upon us], let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith; or ministry [or service], let us use it in our ministering; he who teaches, in teaching; he who exhorts, in exhortation; he who gives, with liberality; he who leads, with diligence; he who shows mercy, with cheerfulness.
The gifts of God that have been given to you through the Holy Spirit are not to be squandered. They are not for you. They are others that you can affect through the pouring out of God's Spirit from your heart. Enough said.
The Feast of Tabernacles takeaway from this section here is that the Feast is a time of outflowing, overflowing, loving service to others, not for any kind of self-satisfaction. It is a time when we are here to learn how to serve others and to serve with a whole heart. Take those gifts that we have been given through God's Spirit and help other people as much as we can.
As I mentioned a sermon or two ago, we have the ability to affect others greatly. I was going through, as I mentioned, the fruit of the Spirit. Those are spiritual gifts that are developed in us through our work with Jesus Christ. Not so that we are seen to be loving or joyful or patient or good, or any of those things. It is so that we can then give those fruits to others. Let us read them. These are back in Galatians 5, verse 22. These are the things that we are to be producing as fruit for others to eat, if you will.
Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, [is] joy, [is] peace, [is] longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.
There is no restriction on your providing those things to others. You are a spiritual being encased in flesh right now and we are learning how to take of that wonderful outpouring of God's Spirit, develop these fruits of the Spirit, and then push them out toward other people. Whatever your gift is. Some of you, "I don't have any gifts. I can't do anything." Well, maybe you cannot preach a sermon or maybe you cannot do this, that, or the other thing that is supposedly looked on as a great gift, but you could just be thankful. Gratitude is a wonderful! It is not mentioned here, but it is a wonderful gift of God's Spirit. You could be courteous and kind.
One of the biggest ones is that we control ourselves. Do not run over people. I am not talking about in a car, but we have a bit of self-restraint and we give them what they need, not what we think they need. Not make ourselves the center of it all, but in controlling our spirit, give people the good things out of our own heart.
That is what Jesus is talking about. It is not to be a static thing. That Spirit that He gives us is supposed to flow right through us and out to others so that they will be benefited. And if everybody does this, as more and more people do this, more and more people get caught up in it. I am not talking about any kind of Pentecostal type of spiritual thing. But as more people actually give of the fruits of the Spirit toward other people, it draws them in. And what did we see in the last section? You make a witness; and people can be called through that. It does not have to be a piece of literature. It could be the example of one of Christ's disciples overflowing with the gift of His Spirit. That is the best kind of opening of a person's mind because they see a son or a daughter of God and they say, "That is a Christian. That's what I want to be."
Let us go on in John 7. I do not want to get bogged down here. Still have two more sections to go.
John 7:40-44 Therefore many [a multitude] from the crowd, when they heard this saying, said, "Truly this is the Prophet." [He must have really impressed them.] Others said, "This is the Christ." But some said, "Will the Christ come out of Galilee? Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the seed of David and from the town of Bethlehem, where David was?" So there was a division among the people because of Him. Now some of them wanted to take Him, but no one laid hands on Him.
This short paragraph illustrates the people's profound misunderstanding of who Jesus was. Some speculated He was the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15-19, perhaps because He had just spoken and promised about the living water, just as Moses provided water from the rock in the wilderness. I could see how they would do that. Others thought He must be Messiah. At the time the Jews thought the Prophet and the Messiah were actually different individuals, never thinking that the same person could fulfill both roles. But they convinced themselves that Jesus could not be the Messiah because He was from Galilee.
Now, a lot of people knew that actually He was from Bethlehem. He just lived in Galilee in Nazareth. And maybe what we are seeing here is the international complexion of the crowd. A lot of Jews coming from outside of Jerusalem and Judea and they did not know all of Christ's curriculum vitae, His CV. They did not know all the background on Jesus. So it could have been that, that they were just ignorant of His actual background.
The point here, though, is that the crowd was divided because of Jesus. The Greek word here is schisma, schism, meaning division or a split into parties, like political parties. Elsewhere, Jesus declares that that was actually what He had come to do. He had actually come not to bring peace but a sword. He had come to divide, not to unite. We can see that in Luke 12. Let us go back there. We will read verses 49 through 53. The header in the New King James here is "Christ Brings Division."
Luke 12:49-53 "I came to send fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished! Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division. For from now on five in one house will be divided: three against two, and two against three. Father will be divided against son and son against father, mother against daughter, daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law."
So His presence among them made people consider what they thought about Him and the end result was great division among themselves about who Jesus was and what He was doing. So wherever Jesus is and wherever His message is proclaimed, divisions, splits, schisms arise because each person perceives Him differently. Everyone having different desires, expectations, goals, knowledge, understanding, worries, what have you, and all of these things color their experience with Him. So we do not all reach the same conclusion about Him.
Those differences of outlook and opinion about Him cause a lot of disagreements among people; fights, disharmony, and ultimately, separation. And do we not know, even God's church is not immune to this very human problem. How many splits exist today from the Worldwide Church of God? Hundreds? A thousand? I do not know what the current number is. You know, we have some that have several thousand people and some that have a couple of hundred, some that have a few dozen, and then there is one guy and his family and that is his congregation. And everybody has some other different kind of thing that they glom onto and that just makes them split from other people because you do not quite think the same way about Jesus or His message.
If nothing else, this passage here in John 7, just a few verses long, assures us that by themselves human beings will never stop disagreeing, dissenting, and dividing over Christ in His gospel. It just cannot happen, not in this world, not with the spirit of Satan and human nature at work in people. And as I just said, it occurs in the church too because we allow ourselves to be influenced by our own human nature and the spirit of Satan from time to time.
And so Jesus is telling us that these divisions and splits are a fact of life. It is never going to be resolved until after the second death. That is when everybody will worship the King. But until then there will still be people who are not quite on the team, if you know what I mean, and they think that the things that they are saying, or the things that they understand are much more important than any kind of truth or unity that the rest of the body believes. So we just have to take that into account.
The Feast of Tabernacles takeaway from this particular paragraph is that the Feast of Tabernacles is a time to come to know the real Jesus and the truth that He brought, and follow Him. And I can add a kind of a tag end to this. Do not be too worried about divisions. You do you. You follow Christ. Do not fight, do not bicker, do not cause disharmony. Follow Christ because it is inevitable that people will disagree. That is not on you if you follow the standard.
Let us get this final one in, the final paragraph.
John 7:45-52 Then the officers came to the chief priests [these were the ones that had been sent out to arrest Him earlier] and Pharisees, who said to them, "Why have you not brought Him?" The officers answered, "No man ever spoke like this Man!" Then the Pharisees answered them, "Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him? But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed." [Why are you following the crowd? is what they are saying. They do not know anything.] Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) [that is in chapter 3] said to them, "Does our law judge a man before it hears Him and knows what He is doing?" They answered and said to him, "Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee."
In the intervening time, the Temple guards had not found an opportunity to arrest Jesus and so they come back empty-handed. The guard's reaction here, "No man ever spoke like this Man" implies that His teaching did not restrain them. That was not the reason why they had kept their hands off Him. But His majesty and His power and authority did restrain them, meaning His character, His bearing, His majesty. He was a daunting figure against His enemies. Even knowing that the Sanhedrin would rebuke them for their failure to bring Him back, they would still not touch Him. They were more afraid of Him than the Sanhedrin is what is implied here.
And you remember in the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus said, "I am" and the guards who had come to take Him fell back on their rear ends. That is the same sort of sort of thing that is happening here. It is not as dramatic, but Jesus was not glorified, but He was still God and He was an imposing presence against those who were His enemies. And they said, "We've never heard anybody speak like this!" At the tail end of Matthew 7, does it not say there that He spoke with authority and not as the scribes. This Jesus, not literally but figuratively, bowled them over and they would not touch Him. So Jesus had impressed them to the point of disobedience to their masters.
So, of course, the Pharisees accused them of being deceived by Jesus. Did He fool you too? That charlatan? Then they curse and condemn the crowd saying that they did not know the law. What this means is, it is not that they did not know the law. Almost every Jew knew the law. They went to religious schools, they went to Yeshiva, they went to all these places where they would learn the law. What this implies is that they did not know the law like the Pharisees did. That the Pharisees had special knowledge, they had secret hidden wisdom, which was in the oral law or the writings of the sages. And if they had known these things that the Pharisees knew, they would have condemned Jesus also.
This is kind of a little bit out there, but scholars think that they were referring to Deuteronomy 27:26 at this point, where it says there in the blessings and cursings from Mount Ebal, "Cursed is the one who does not confirm all the words of this law." So they were saying Jesus was bringing some other kind of teaching and He was not confirming the law that the Pharisees understood.
Now apparently, among the Sanhedrin no one dissented from this pronouncement that he had made except Nicodemus. And his defense is very ironic here because he brings up a point of law. The Pharisees had just said, "They do not know the law like we do." And Nicodemus says, "But do you not remember this law that says we do not accuse somebody without hearing him and knowing what he is doing."
Let us go back to Deuteronomy 1. I just want to show you this because Nicodemus did a very good thing here, what Jesus had modeled in the Temptation, where He quoted Scripture or at least referred to Scripture. You could already see that by this time, Nicodemus was being converted.
Deuteronomy 1:16-17 Then I [this is Moses speaking] commanded your judges at that time, saying, "Hear the cases between your brethren, and judge righteously between a man and his brother or the stranger who is with him. You shall not show partiality in judgment; you shall hear the small as well as the great; you shall not be afraid in any man's presence, for the judgment is God's. The case that is too hard for you, bring it to me, and I will hear it."
Deuteronomy 19:15-18 "One witness shall not rise against a man concerning any iniquity or any sin that he commits; by the mouth of two or three witnesses the matter shall be established. If a false witness arises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, then both men in the controversy shall stand before the Lord, before the priests and the judges who serve in those days. And the judges shall make diligent inquiry, and indeed, if the witness is a false witness, who has testified falsely against his brother, then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil person from among you."
So Nicodemus politely pointed out that they were putting themselves under condemnation for the way that they were rushing to judgment about Jesus. It is very interesting that these things, the law that we had just seen here in Deuteronomy, was not followed by the Sanhedrin when they finally did arrest Jesus and accuse Him, and they even brought up false witnesses against Him. So a little bit of foreshadowing there of what would happen a little bit later on, another six months when they would finally arrest Him.
Their angry response to Nicodemus and his gentle reminder, I will say, is to accuse him of being a Galilean. And that was an insult to any Jerusalemite because they thought Galileans were hicks and hillbillies and ignoramuses and fools. And then they went on and made it worse by making a ridiculous statement that no prophet had come from Galilee—and Jonah was from there. We do not know all the prophets but there were others who probably came from Galilee or that area of northern Israel as well.
But what we are seeing here is that the Jews would do just about anything to maintain their anger against Jesus. They were willing to go so far as to actually break the law in order to accuse Him and condemn Him for rocking their boat.
The Feast of Tabernacles takeaway here is that the Feast of Tabernacles teaches that we cannot change this anti-God world. If people are against us, there is really nothing we can do about it to convince them that they should not be against us. And so as we do, as we have known for many years, we know that there is a better world coming. There will be a world, who knows how many years ahead it will begin, but that world will be a better one of peace and of righteousness where God's way, no longer cursed and defamed as it is in this world, is practiced by all.
And you know, usually at the Feast, we come across situations where we are reminded that this is still Satan's world and that we have to understand that we are in a little bit of an oasis here. We are amongst ourselves, but we do not have to step far to get plunged back into the wickedness of this world. So, we just have to understand that our enemies are still out there even though we are enjoying a great time here at the Feast and learning so much, that yeah, we are going to have to get back out into it soon enough. So enjoy it while you are here.
Let us conclude in II Peter 3.
II Peter 3:11-13 Therefore, since all these things will be dissolved [that is, this present world at one point], what manner of persons ought you to be in holy conduct and godliness, looking for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat? Nevertheless we, according to His promise, look for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.
And may that day come quickly!
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