The Reason for the Season
Notes
Transcript
The Reason for the Season
The Reason for the Season
INTRODUCTION
Holiday Traditions, breaking traditions. Cultural, National and Religious Holidays. Jesus upset the traditions, and re-framed these holidays, and explained that they point to him.
NARATIO
Sevens Series. Looking at these Groups of Sevens.
Seven Miracles/Signs that Jesus Perfrorms. Seven Witnesses to who jesus is. Seven times Jesus says “Hour has come” Seven times Jesus says I am Something. Seven times Jesus simply says I AM. Today, we’re going to look at Seven Holidays/Festivals that Jesus up-ends.
—
PROPOSITIO
today I want to look at these seven different holidays/festivals Jesus attends in the book of John.
All total, in john, Jesus causes a stir at two Sabbath festivals, one feast of tabernacles, one Hanukah, this is the one and only place the holiday of hanukah is mentioned in the bible, and three Passover festivals.
And the big idea, at the risk of sounding cheesy this time of year.
Jesus is the reason for the season.
Not just Christmas. that’s something we like to say around christmas time, but we’re going to see that for every holiday that the Jewish people celebrated either from the old testament ,or from the history of the Jewish people, Jesus is the Reason for the season.
CONFIRMATIO
John 2:12-17
John 2:12-17
After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother and brothers and his disciples. There they stayed for a few days.
When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
In the temple courts he found people selling cattle, sheep and doves, and others sitting at tables exchanging money.
So he made a whip out of cords, and drove all from the temple courts, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables.
To those who sold doves he said, “Get these out of here! Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!”
His disciples remembered that it is written: “Zeal for your house will consume me.”
Here’s what you need to know about Passover
The Passover, the holiday celebrating when God freed the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt, was one of 3 required pilgrimages.
Remember that fact, it’s going to be important later.
And during the passover, every household was required to bring a perfect, unblemished lamb as a sacrifice to the Lord. It has to be perfect. No spots, no cuts, no scrapes, no nothing.
Logistically, if you have to travel hundreds of miles on foot, and bring your spotless perfect lamb with you.
And along the way the lamb gets his leg scratched on thicket. Or stumbles and hurts his leg, or gets injured in anyway on the way to jerusalem, you’re in big trouble. Because the lamb was unblemished when you left, but by the time you got to Jerusalem, he’s all beat up and now it’s not a valid sacrifice.
So what most people did if they didn’t live close to Jerusalem, was they just bought a lamb there in Jerusalem.
Makes sense. It’s the big city, they can keep all of the lambs in good condition there in the city, it works out for everyone.
The problem of course, is that the principle of supply and demand kicks in.
The vendors in jerusalem are like, look, we have all the animals. the people have come all this way, they’re legally required to by said animals.
Therefore, we can charge whatever we want. We’re going to make a killing off of this passover festival, and there’s nothing they can do about it.
Jesus walks into the temple and he sees this and he is furious.
And so he braids a whip.
Which is calculated by the way. It takes a long time to braid an entire whip. Jesus wasn’t acting rash here. This was calculated. And flips over the tables and drives the money changers out. and says enough is enough.
You’re not going to turn the passover in to an opportunity to make a quick buck at the expense of the people.
You’re not going to turn the Father’s house into a marketplace.
To really let this sink in, imagine if you came to church and there was a fee for taking communion. $9.99 a month gets you unlimited communion.
If you wanted to get baptized, and the church said, oh yeah, baptisms cost $75.
But after Jesus does this, the Jewish leaders come up, and instead of being like “you’re right, Jesus, this is an injustice, and this is immoral, and gross.” they got offended.
Because this rabbi from Galilee of all places came in and upended their system.
And the first question they ask him is basically “what gives you the right to come into our temple (my paraphrase) and tell us how to run our passover.
The Jews then responded to him, “What sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?”
Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”
They replied, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?”
But the temple he had spoken of was his body.
The Temple was supposed to be the physical dwelling place of God. That’s why you were required to go to Jerusalem to bring your sacrifices there, because that was the physical dwelling place of God on earth.
And Jesus tells them, basically, not anymore.
Jesus is the incarnation of God. That’s why John 1:14 says
The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us....
In otherwards, the temple, the dwelling place of God, all of that that was associated with the passover sacrifice, it was all meant to point to Jesus. the reason for hte Passover season.
Now while he was in Jerusalem at the Passover Festival, many people saw the signs he was performing and believed in his name.
This theme of Jesus showing up for a festival, and then John is going to mention whether or not people believed in him, is going to come up again as we go through each of these festivals.
The next one comes up in chapter 5.
Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals.
John doesn’t tell us which festival it was here. But what happens is that Jesus comes across a man who had been disabled for 38 years, and Jesus heals him.
And even though John doesn’t tell us exactly which holiday it was, he does tell us a little later in verse 9
At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath,
What John really wants you to pay attention to here is that the day was a sabbath.
The sabbath, the day of rest is considered a holiday or festival for the Jewish people. We don’t think of it in those terms, because it happens once a week, but it’s held out in the law of moses as being a festival day.
And I want to mention the other sabbath that Jesus upends, so we’re going to go out of order for just a minute, because the point for both of these instances is the same one.
In John 9 a very similar thing happens with a man who had been born blind from birth.
They brought to the Pharisees the man who had been blind.
Now the day on which Jesus had made the mud and opened the man’s eyes was a Sabbath.
Therefore the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his sight. “He put mud on my eyes,” the man replied, “and I washed, and now I see.”
Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others asked, “How can a sinner perform such signs?” So they were divided.
I’ve mentioned a couple of times throughout this series how the pharisees had begun to add extra rules over and above God’s law. Sabbath observance was one of those places where it was most egregious.
That’s one of the issues at play here in these two sabbath healings.
The other issue at stake here, is that the pharisees and religious leaders had begun to feel like they had authority over the sabbath. They got to decide what was and wasn’t acceptable to do on the sabbath.
I mean after all, they’re the religious leaders.
And Jesus, by doing these things, is re-claiming His authority over the sabbath.
That’s a big deal.
Remember the story from Matthew, where the leaders came to Jesus to test him, and they asked “what is the greatest commandment?” Remember what Jesus told them?
Love the lord your god with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and love the neighbor as yourself?
If you would have asked that same question to the pharisees, their answer would have been:
The greatest commandment is
Exodus 20:8 ““Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”
Rest on the sabbath. That’s the most important commandment according to the pharisees.
There remains, then, a Sabbath-rest for the people of God;
for anyone who enters God’s rest also rests from their works, just as God did from his.
And in hebrews he’s not talking about the day of the week, he’s talking about the eternal rest we get in Jesus.
“Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.
For the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath.”
The whole point of the “day of rest” was to point to the bigger idea that Jesus is our rest.
But again, what Jesus was doing was upsetting their skewed view of what they thought the sabbath should have been all about. Making all sorts of rules about what can and can’t happen on the sabbath.
And this, by the way, has become a point of contention in some circles of Christianity today even.
Because some Christians will try to tell you that Christians ought to still observe the sabbath laws.
They’ll say, the sabbath on Saturday was replaced by Sunday. Sunday is the new sabbath and so we’re required to take a day of rest on Sunday.
And they’ll make all sorts of rules about what you can do on sunday. Sunday is a day of rest they’ll say, you shouldn’t go shopping on sunday, you shouldn’t go to work in the afternoon, you shouldn’t go to a resaurant. Because you need to obey the new sabbath.
Read your new testament. and you will not find a single verse that says that.
The sabbath didn’t get replaced by Sunday. It got replaced by Jesus. You get to have a day of eternal spiritual rest every day because you’re in Christ.
But this upends the cycle of abuse that the pharisees were inflicting on the people.
If we back up, to John 6, right before Jesus feeds 5,000 people we see another passover festival that Jesus upends.
Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias),
and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick.
Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples.
The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
Here I want us to very carefully pay attention to the details.
The passover isn’t here yet, it’s just near. Their in Galilee, presumably on their way down to Jerusalem. Jesus feeds 5,000 people, he then tells them that He is the Bread from heaven.
He commands them that unless they eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Christ they will have no life in them.
He’s pointing forward to communion, and the act of partaking of the blood and body of Jesus.
But if we’re just looking at the timeline here, he gets done telling them all of that.
He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.
So he hasn’t gone down for the passover yet. He’s still up north.
And his disciples are like, this is difficult. We don’t understand this teaching about eating the body and drinking the blood of the son of man.
From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“You do not want to leave too, do you?” Jesus asked the Twelve.
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.”
Then Jesus replied, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!”
(He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.)
After this, Jesus went around in Galilee. He did not want to go about in Judea because the Jewish leaders there were looking for a way to kill him.
The question is, and there’s a real Bible question here that is unanswered, did Jesus actually go to this passover that was mentioned in John 6?
Because the feeding of the 5,000 and the walking on water, all occured before the passsover, and then it says After all of this he didn’t go around in Jerusalem.
On the one hand, you could look at it and say “Well, the law required it. We know that Jesus never broke the law, never sinned, and so he obviously went, and john is saying he went, nothing substantial happened at the actual festival, but then after he came back from the festival he stayed away from Jerusalem”
On the other hand, if you look closely at the law that required you to go and celebrate the passover in Jerusalem.
In exodus 12, God is talking about the three required festivals
And it says
“Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord.
It doesn’t say “Travel to Jerusalem” it says “Appear before the Lord”
Jesus doesn’t have to be in Jerusalem to appear before hte Lord he is the Lord. and he is in the father and the father is in him.
Everywhere he goes he’s appearing before the lord.
It’s quite possible Jesus could have skipped going to Jerusalem, and have still been in compliance with the law.
Either way you look at it, the important thing John wants you to notice, is that by the time this second passover had come and Gone, nearly everyone except Jesus’ closest followers had deserted him.
in one year, he went from being the most popular rabbi in all of israel, to being completely alone except for his closes followers.
All because he taught one thing that was difficult. Hard to understand, hard to reconcile. Eat the flesh of the son of man, and drink his blood, and everyone was like “nope, I’m out”
The question the reader should be asking is, what kindof disciple are you?
Are you the kind who turns and runs anytime Jesus tell you something you don’t understand?
Or are you going to be like peter
Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.
I may not understand them? But I know that they’re full of life. So I’m going to stick it out, and see where this thing goes.
So Jesus, whether he attend the second passover or not, is hanging around galilee.
And the festival of tabernacles comes up.
This was a holiday that happens in the fall, so perhaps 6 or so months has passed.
But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near,
Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do.
No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”
For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
So they’re almost taunting him. If you really are the son of God, go show people. Why are you hiding here in Galilee like some sort of coward.
And at first Jesus tells his brothers to go pound sand. He’s like you go to the festival, I’m staying here.
However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret.
Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, “Where is he?”
Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.” Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.”
But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.
The festival of tabernacles served two major purposes.
1, it was to commemorate the time that God provided for the isralites while they were wandering in the desert.
Part of what they did was they went out side and built tents and lived in tents for a week, to remind them of when they lived in tents out in the wilderness during the time of moses.
2, because the festival happened in the fall, it was a time of prayer, and gratitude for the harvest.
Kind of like how we treat thanksgiving.
One of the traditions that had arisen during the time of Jesus, this is not something mentioned in Scripture, but it was a practice that the jewish people had developed, was a water offering on the altar at the temple.
There were all sorts of traditions surrounding it. Some people said it was to ask for rain between now and the next harvest. Some people said it had to do with the flood, and god’s promise not to flood the earth.
Some people said it was to commemorate how God provided water from the rock in the wilderness.
You know how traditions go, especially ones that aren’t rooted in scripture, they sort of take on a life of their own.
But probably the most convincing place where this tradition got started comes from the prophet zechariah.
Zechariah 14, the prophet is talking about the day of hte lord, when the messiah comes:
On that day living water will flow out from Jerusalem, half of it east to the Dead Sea and half of it west to the Mediterranean Sea, in summer and in winter.
And a few verses later in zechariah, verse 16 he says
Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles.
Which is why in john 7:37 it says
On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.
Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive. Up to that time the Spirit had not been given, since Jesus had not yet been glorified.
This tradition you’ve developed, this pouring of water, and pointing back to the promises that when the messiah comes living water will flow out of jerusalem and people will be celebrating the festival of tabernacles.
Jesus says I’m the reason for hte season. I’m the messiah you’ve been waiting for. And the water that’s going to flow out of jerusalem, it’s the holy spirit poured out onto followers of Jesus.
In John 10, our second to last festival Jesus attends:
Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter,
and Jesus was in the temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.
The Jews who were there gathered around him, saying, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.”
I encourage you to read this passage verses 25 and following. Some of the things Jesus says are difficult to understand. Much like the blood and body of the son of man comments.
I encourage you to read it, and wrestle through it, we don’t have time to touch on Jesus’ response in verses 25 and following this morning.
but what I want you to know about the festival of dedication, which you’ve probably heard it called by it’s jewish name Hannakauh .
This was a festival that arose during the time in between the Old testament and the new testament.
Really quick history lesson.
After the close of the Old testament, the Jewish people found themselves under the rule of a guy named Antiochus Epiphanes the 4th.
Antiochus epiphanes was a bad dude.
He forced the Jewish people to eat unclean foods.
He tortured them into denying God.
He erected a statue of Zeus in the jewish temple and forced them to give sacrifices to Zeus.
And the Jewish people had said enough is enough. And they started a revolutionary war.
And for around 100 years or so, before the roman General Pompeii came in and conquered Jerusalem again, the Jewish people had an independent nation.
Now it wasn’t great, a lot of the rulers were bad dudes. It was honestly like a repeat of the bad kings that you see in the book of 2 Kings.
But for the first time in a long time, they had an independent israel.
But at the time of Jesus they didn’t, they were living under the rule of the Roman empire.
The feast of dedication, or Hannakah was a celebration of that independence, where they overthrew their oppressors, they re-dedicated the temple, they cleared out all of the pagan idols, and had an independent Jewish state.
Think about, for a second, the 4th of July. Where we celebrate our independence from Great brittan.
Imagine that some time in the future the United states gets invaded and conquered by some foriegn nation.
What do you think that the atmosphere would be like every year on the 4th of July?
That’s going to be the time of year every year where people start to yearn for their independence.
We’re celebrating the day we declared independence from Great Brittan, and yet here we are living as colonies again. Maybe this is going to be the year.
Maybe this will finally be the year where we do it again.
And with Jesus making claims to be the messiah, the implication was, eventually, the promised king of israel is going to overthrow the romans, he’s going to establish the Jewish kingdom again.
And so they’re like Jesus, are you the messiah or aren’t you?
And furthermore, if you are, when is the revolution going to start? Why not now? During the festival of Hannakah, when we gained independence the first time.
Are you going to do something or not?
But Jesus is pointing to a much much bigger role than just a political figure.
Because Jesus understood that it’s not Rome who is enslaving us.
Rome isn’t the enemy you need to be afraid of.
And for the people at the time, the idea that the all powerful roman empire was not a threat, they couldn’t fathom it.
Guess what, you can go to italy and see the ruins of this mighty empire today.
It’s buried under-ground. in ruins.
The real enemy is sin. The real enemy that we need to be freed from is Satan.
Jesus kicked off a revolutionary war, but it wasn’t against rome.
And it wasn’t during hannakah.
It would be several months later during the Passover.
It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
So far, Jesus has upended every single holiday and festival he’s attended.
He’s upended the traditions of the pharisees, he’s upended the traditions of hte people.
He’s taken something that they had been doing for centuries, and in one fell swoop has come in and said, all of that points to me, all of that points to the coming of Jesus the Christ. The annointed king, the messiah, the son of God.
And as we are going into the season of Christmas, we all have our own
John 19:1-7
John 19:1-7
Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.
The soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head. They clothed him in a purple robe
and went up to him again and again, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” And they slapped him in the face.
Once more Pilate came out and said to the Jews gathered there, “Look, I am bringing him out to you to let you know that I find no basis for a charge against him.”
When Jesus came out wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe, Pilate said to them, “Here is the man!”
As soon as the chief priests and their officials saw him, they shouted, “Crucify! Crucify!” But Pilate answered, “You take him and crucify him. As for me, I find no basis for a charge against him.”
The Jewish leaders insisted, “We have a law, and according to that law he must die, because he claimed to be the Son of God.”
John 19:16-27
John 19:16-27
Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. So the soldiers took charge of Jesus.
Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic is called Golgotha).
There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in the middle.
Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: jesus of nazareth, the king of the jews.
Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
“Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.” This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said, “They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.” So this is what the soldiers did.
Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,”
and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
John 19:38-42
John 19:38-42
Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.
He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds.
Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.
At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.
Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
If we just stopped right here...
