Four Lessons from the Feast of Booths

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

Potluck today right after after service.

I did mention that I have exciting announcement, but I am not going to tell you until the end of the sermon because I don’t want you thinking about it all throughout this sermon.

INTRODUCTION:

Now we pick up where we left off last week after Jesus’ discussion with His brothers. Jesus has made His way to the feast of booths.

And what I want to focus on today is what Jesus is teaches the crowd. Remember, this was a threat to His life. And we will see these people had murder on their hearts, they want Him dead. But what He has to say has great importance, and he ties it in with the significance of the feast.

So what we will do is move down through chapter 7 focusing primarily on what Jesus is teaching. And we are going to pull out four spiritual truths before each section and make some application to our lives.

1) The prerequisite to know spiritual truth is having the willingness to do God’s will

John 7:14–19 “But when it was now the midst of the feast Jesus went up into the temple, and began to teach. The Jews then were astonished, saying, “How has this man become learned, having never been educated?” So Jesus answered them and said, “My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me. “If anyone is willing to do His will, he will know of the teaching, whether it is of God or whether I speak from Myself”

Explanation:

Here we are in the midst of the Feast of Booths. Jesus ended up going up to the festival after His brothers had gone, and finds an opportunity to begin teaching the people. And what He says is so good that the Jews who are seeking o kill Him stand back amazed and say, where did this guy learn these things? He’s never been to school, never been to seminary, never been to rabbinic training yet he teaches better than a rabbi.

So Jesus tells them, that the source of His knowledge and teaching is not from this world, but from God. That His teaching is superior because it is divine and the very words of God Himself.

This is a fulfillment of the promise in Deuteronomy 18:18 “‘I will raise up a prophet from among their countrymen like you, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”

The reason they are astonished and cannot understand what He is saying is because His teachings are divine in origin! They are not worldly philosophies, but have come from heaven. They have spiritual meaning, and not everyone can understand them.

Then Jesus says, “if anyone is willing to do His will, he will know…whether this teaching it is of God”

There is the prerequisite to understanding spiritual truth: “If anyone is willing to do His will…”

People often try to approach Christianity like a college coarse. If we go to hear the lectures, we read the books, we open our minds and listen to the instructor then we will become learned.

So we come to church, bring their Bibles, open them up and listen to the pastor or teacher who teaches us, with an expectation to leave with more knowledge that will give them understanding.

But Jesus said spiritual truth does not work like a mathematics class. The key to knowing spiritual truth is not a mind issue but a heart issue. It requires us to have a heart that is bent on doing the will of God! It requires one to come to God not desiring to know before desiring to do.

You don’t have to have a 120 IQ to know spiritual truth. You do not have to be smart at all! What you do have to have is a heart that fears God and desires to do whatever God says and requires of you!

What is God’s will? It means we will do whatever God says. It is] a call for obedience! No matter how ridiculous, no matter how uncomfortable, no matter how great the sacrifice, no matter how much against culture, a person who willing to do God’s will comes to Him with their whole lives and places it in the hands of God and says, I will do whatever You tell Me to do” I relinquish all ownership over my life, my will is to do your will, and then understanding will come

AND If we are unwilling to obey God, unwilling to do the will of God then deception is inevitable.

How do they become deceived?

When people hear the gospel and understand it is a call to repent and believe, or they hear preaching against their specific sin, or they hear something that calls them to a different way of life that they live and they are forced to make a choice. They either do whatever it is God is saying to them, or they disregard it and live their lives.

Heres what happens to those people. They begin to rationalize their sin. They begin to creation reasons why what they do is ok, they convince themselves the life they live is acceptable to God, they appeal to culture, they appeal to grace, they say the church is wrong, on and on to justify their refusal to do the will of God. And eventually what was once a serious choice before them, has now been silenced by a refusal to obey God.

Willingness is key to knowing truth. And these people could not get that Jesus was the messiah who came to save them, because they refused to do the will of God. His teaching was too great, because their hearts were unwilling to obey.

What is your approach to God?

Do you come to church like a mathematics class seeking knowledge, or do you come with a soft open heart that says to God before you ever step into this sanctuary, “God I will do whatever you want me to do, if you will just make it clear to me”. That is the person who hear from God!

The second lesson Jesus gives is:

2) Judge with Righteous Judgement

John 7:22-24 “For this reason Moses has given you circumcision (not because it is from Moses, but from the fathers), and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man. “If a man receives circumcision on the Sabbath so that the Law of Moses will not be broken, are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath? “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”

Explanation:

In the background of this entire chapter are the judgements people are making about Jesus.

The brothers of Jesus had their own opinions about Him which was not good. They are sarcastic and do not believe in Him

The crowds have made their judgements about Jesus, some are for Him some are against Him.

The Jews have made their judgements about Him, and they have concluded that this false teacher needs to die because He is a heretic and misleading the people.

I want us to focus on this last verse here, about judging with righteous judgement.

These people have decided that Jesus has a demon and cannot be the Messiah because He breaks the Law of Moses. (BTW, be careful who you say has a demon. I’m not saying there are not demons today, or even demon possession today, but people are so quick to attribute demon possession to just about anything and I think if we saw a demon possessed person we would know it)

Jesus says, they have made a bad judgement call on Him because they don’t have the facts nor understand the spiritual teachings of the Word of God as a whole.

Circumcision and the Law of Moses

They were accusing Jesus of breaking the Law of Moses because he healed a man on the Sabbath which they considered work and a sin. (v 23) “are you angry with Me because I made an entire man well on the Sabbath?”

Yet at the same time they were wanting to kill Him (v 19 “why do you seek to kill Me?”) which is clearly breaking the Law of Moses Ex 20:13 “You shall not murder”

And what Jesus is showing them is their hypocrisy! They were accusing Him of doing something, yet in their hearts were doing the very same thing!

This is the kind of judgement Jesus condemned in Matthew 7.

They also circumcise children on the Sabbath [v 22] “and on the Sabbath you circumcise a man” (which was considered a work).

How did they get around that? Well the Law of Moses says you must circumcise children on the 8th day. If a child was born on Saturday which was the Sabbath, then that would mean that the following Sabbath would be the 8th day and according to the Law, they would need to be circumcised.

But circumcision was considered a kind of work. But they made the judgement call that making a man ritually pure was more important than their Sabbath law.

And Jesus is saying, how unjust to excuse themselves from making a man ritually pure but not Jesus who made a whole man’s body well.

And then Jesus drops this truth on them AND US: “Do not judge with appearance, but judge with righteous judgement”

They were only looking at the surface of Jesus. They made their judgements by superficial criteria, they had made their judgements without a real understanding of the Word of God, they evaluated Jesus from assumptions, and not from facts.

And we must be careful that we do not fall into this error today.

How can we judge with appearance today?

It means to make an opinion or conclusion about someone based upon what is on the outside, what we can see, what is superficial.

We can make quick judgements based on how people look physically

We can jump to conclusions without ever knowing the facts.

We often think we know the motives of someone’s heart yet the Bible says only God knows a persons motives

Proverbs 16:2 NASB95

All the ways of a man are clean in his own sight, But the Lord weighs the motives.

Do not judge according to appearance!

This will lead to God’s judgement upon us

But notice He does not say (like the world does) “Do not judge at all”

The most well known command in American culture is “Do not judge”

But Jesus does not say that here. He says judge with the right kind of judgement. Judge with righteous judgement

What is righteous judgement?

Well this whole conversation is back and forth about whether or not Jesus has broken the Law of Moses (which He hasn’t) and then about where he comes from (they claim He is from Galilee and the Bible says He is from Bethlehem).

They say the Bible says no one will know where the Messiah will come from, but the prophet Micah says he will be born in Bethlehem!

Righteous judgment is always based upon the Word of God and not our opinions!

It must be based upon the whole counsel of God’s Word

We cannot pick out things we like to condemn someone lest we be condemned!

Matthew 7:1 ““Do not judge so that you will not be judged.”

Never take it upon yourself to make a judgement upon someone that the Bible does not agree with

Righteous judgements can only be made by people who are faithful to doing God’s will. Why is that? Because only those who do God’s will can understand God’s truth. “If anyone is willing to do His will…He will know”.

One way to protect ourselves from this error of unrighteous judgement is by making sure our will is to do the will of God each and every day.

Only then will we really understand the spiritual truths of Gos, and be able to make righteous judgements.

And let us not forget, that we must make the right judgements about God as well! That is what this crowd was doing. They were judging Jesus

We must never fall into the temptation to make up our own God, or make God who we ant Him to be.

God is the God the Bible, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. What the Word of God says about God and about man is true and we must accept is as true no matter how much we may struggle with it.

3) We can know all about Jesus, and still not know truly know Jesus

John 7:25–29 “So some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, “Is this not the man whom they are seeking to kill? “Look, He is speaking publicly, and they are saying nothing to Him. The rulers do not really know that this is the Christ, do they? “However, we know where this man is from; but whenever the Christ may come, no one knows where He is from.” Then Jesus cried out in the temple, teaching and saying, “You both know Me and know where I am from; and I have not come of Myself, but He who sent Me is true, whom you do not know. “I know Him, because I am from Him, and He sent Me.”

Explanation:

These people are hearing what Jesus is claiming, that He is the Christ. They have seen Him heal the lame man. They hear His teachings, His claims that He is from God who offers living water and bread from heaven.

And they look at Jesus and say, how can this man be the Christ? This is the carpenter’s son from Nazareth. This is the son of Mary whom we have known our whole lives. We know where he was born, we know where he is from, we know his brothers, his mother, He cannot be the Messiah.

So Jesus says to them, you know Me, but you don’t really know Me.

Because if you really knew Me, YOU WOULD COME TO ME!

IF YOU KNEW ME you would know that I came from the Father,

If you knew Me then you would be rejoicing that the salvation of God has come to earth to save His people from their sins!

But they didn’t really know Jesus, they only knew about Jesus.

Bridge:

Just like this crowd 2,000 years ago, we can know all about Jesus, His origin, His history, even the OT prophecies that point exclusively to Him, know His teachings and believe they are true, and still not truly know the person Jesus.

Knowing Christ is not the same as knowledge of Christ. Knowing about the Savior, is not enough to know the Savior.

And what is the prerequisite of knowing spiritual truth? A willingness to obey God

Application:

A pre-christian culture

A few years ago, I was given the opportunity to take a mission trip to Salt Lake city Utah. This is the Mormon capitol of the world. And there were church planters over there witnessing to mormon’s and seeing them come to Christ and seeing great things. So we took a trip here and got to talk to some of the churchy planters.

One thing really stood out to me was that they said about Salt Lake City. They said it is a pre-Christian culture. A pre-Christian culture is a place that the gospel has never really been introduced to. It is a culture of people who have not really heard the gospel as whole it was new to them. These people have been mormons, taught from grade school, and mormonism is all they have known since the 1800’s.

When these church planters started there, it was like preaching the gospel in the first century to a world that had never heard. Amazing! And it was powerful! People coming out of a cult religion to know the one true God.

WE live in a post-christian culture

I the Bible belt, this area of our nation, there is rarely a person who has not heard the gospel and rarely a person who does not believe in Jesus. Yet the majority of people do not go to church and do not follow Jesus.

One of the dangers of a post-christian culture is that Jesus is so well known that ALMOST everyone knows about Jesus, but few truly know Jesus. Information, evangelical churches, online services, evangelist going door-to-door, bill boards are constantly telling people about Jesus. And most people know about Him, and stop right there and say, “I believe” and that’s all the Jesus I need.

We must be careful that is not our relationship with Jesus. The same as this crowd. The same as many around us. They know about Him, but they do not know Him. W

We must be sure we do not substitute knowledge of Jesus, for a relationship with the living Jesus.

The two are not the same. One will save you, one the other will condemn you.

4) Anyone who thirsts for God and can come and drink

John 7:37–39 “Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink. “He who believes in Me, as the Scripture said, ‘From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water.’ ” But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive; for the Spirit was not yet given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.”

Explanation:

If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink

Notice that is the only condition Jesus gives to the crowd listening. There is no list to check off, just a call to those who are thirsty to come.

I love the simplicity of salvation. It is so simple, yet so profound. So wonderful too glorious for us even to comprehend its full depths.

If your thirsty, come ands drink

What does it mean to be thirsty?

To thirst is to have a need down deep in your soul that this world cannot satisfy. Like the Samaritan woman at the well who came for water every day, never to get enough, Jesus says this water that He gives satisfies a man all the way into eternity!

But that must be what we come for! Not for help on earth, not for glory on earth, not for miracles, not for fleshly desires, but for the thirst of the soul.

If someone wants Jesus, they can have Jesus and in the fullness but they must be thirsty for Jesus!

“Let Him come to Me”

Jesus is the source of living water. He is the One who gives out the living water, He is the One who fills us up, no one else can do that!

And if we want that water, we must come to Jesus. Coming to a preacher will not do it, coming to the baptism waters will not do it, coming to discipleship will not do it, having people pray and counsel and comfort us will not do it.

We must fall down upon our knees at the feet of the living God and cry out to Him! I need you Jesus! You and you alone and I will gladly give up this whole world if you will come into my life and reveal Yourself to Me!

We must get personal with Jesus, open up our lives before Him stand before Him open and bare revealing all that we are, our sin our shame, KNOWING that we have nothing to offer Him but a cry for His mercy and grace because He is a great Savior who saves us just as we are.

“Come to Me and drink”

What does it mean to drink?

This whole gospel is about believing in Him. And the way we drink from Jesus, is to believe in Him (v 39)

Let us think about what it means to believe in Jesus.

Just imagine you standing in that crowd, and seeing this man whom you have known for years do miracles that only God could do. Healing a paralyzed man and immediately command him to walk, and he walk.

And this man tells you He is God in the flesh. That He is the Creator, the sustainer, the only One who can forgive sin and grant eternal life.

And the proof of His divinity has been seen by you. What would you do? Would you simply go on about your life? Working your job, cooking dinner, planning a fishing trip, planning retirement, or would you change your course in life to follow this man and believe and do everything He said and promised?

The disciples dropped everything, and followed Jesus. They gave everything

It is as if our souls are parched, are in drought, are desperately needing a drink and to consume Jesus, all of Jesus, trust every aspect of Jesus with our lives, our souls can only be quenched in Him, we can only live satisfied lives in Him….Jesus

And if we do: “From his innermost being will flow rivers of living water”…“But this He spoke of the Spirit, whom those who believed in Him were to receive”

So when one comes to Jesus and drinks, He receives the Holy Spirit of God produces rivers of living water inside of Him

There is a spiritual, supernatural, event that takes place in a persons life when someone comes to Jesus.

The Holy Spirit enters their life and they are never the same. He is the Agent of transformation. It is He that transforms one into a Christian, that makes one a new creation, that makes one a spiritual being.

And the mark of a Christian? That the Holy Spirit lives in Him, and He knows this because He has radically changed Him.

~PRAYER~