Week 15 - John 7:32-52 - Rivers of Living Water (Feast of Booths - Part 2)

As a reminder, Jesus initially stayed behind and let His family go on to the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem.  This pilgrimage feast was established to remind Jews of their time in the wilderness (Leviticus 23:33-43) and each family would camp outside in makeshift booths for seven days.  Jesus, Himself, we would later read camped on the Mount of Olives (John 8:1-2).

Jesus had arrived mid-week and declared Himself "true": a true prophet validated by signs.  John here records the first of two more declarations that occurred on the last day of the feast.

By the time of the Second Temple, the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) (Leviticus 23:33–43; Numbers 29) had grown to include the Water Drawing Ceremony or Simchat Beit HaShoavah.  

Each morning of the seven-day feast, a priest would go to the Pool of Siloam, draw a golden pitcher of water, return through the Water Gate, to the temple and pour water and wine over the altar (Mishnah Sukkah 4:9–10).  

This was a time of great rejoicing and the acknowledgement of God’s provision through rain with music, dance, torches, and celebration that lasted through the nights of the festivals. 

Prayers for the next year’s rain would begin with the Amidah prayer on Shemini Atzeret (the day after Sukkot).  For it would we inconvenient for it to rain while dwelling in booths!

It was during this final Water Drawing Ceremony that Jesus declares:

John 7:37-38

On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’”

Like what was said to the Woman at the Well (John 4:10-11) Jesus declares that those that believe will not have to draw water.  Out of themselves, as scripture said, would come “rivers of living water”.  This comes from the Zechariah’s prophecy concerning the coming Day of the Lord (Zechariah 14:1-9).

John 7:39

Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified.

John explains for us that the water is the Holy Spirit, the source of eternal life.  It is to this fountain that we are invited (Revelation 22:1,17).

Until Jesus was glorified, the effect of the Fall was still in place.  Once man’s sin was atoned for and we receive Christ’s righteousness in exchange, then and only then can we receive eternal life and re-enter the Garden.  For the combination of eternal life and unrighteousness are not permitted (Genesis 3:22-24).

Recall please the Woman at the Well (John 4:1-42) who had to draw the water from such a great depth.  This echoes the effort of the priest drawing the water from the distant Pool of Siloam, which was a 20-minute procession with about a 400-foot elevation change.

Jesus, in this way, continues to press the Gospel.  Faith, rather than misguided effort, would unleash God’s blessing of Spirit-filled and eternal life.

Read slowly the following.  It has three sections:

• The works of the flesh: things we should never do as part of the temple of God.
• The fruit of the Spirit: things that flow out of us over the thresholds of that temple.
• The footprints of the Spirt: cautions that keep the mortar tight between each brick that makes up the temple.

Galatians 5:16-26
But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law.  

 

Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these.  

 

I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.  

 

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.  

 

And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

Week 14 - John 7:1-31 - Feast of Booths (Part 1)

We have reached approximately the middle of the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ. Yes, He confronted the Jewish leaders in Jerusalem during the first Passover (John 2:13-25), but after that His ministry epicenter was Galilee in the North. Out of their immediate gaze, He established His identity with five signs, and brought those that would follow Him to the decision point we discussed last week, when He spoke the first of the Seven “I am” Statements, a very hard saying indeed (John 6:60).  With this statement He established Himself as the new manna:

John 6:51

I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

This week, Jesus initially stays behind and lets His family go on to the Feast of Booths in Jerusalem.  This pilgrimage feast was established to remind Jews of their time in the wilderness (Leviticus 23:33-43) and each family camped outside in makeshift booths for seven days.

He quietly arrives mid-feast and begins to teach in the temple.  While it was normal for Rabbis to teach in the various courts of the temple, what He said was not.

John 7:18

The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory; but the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood.

John uses the word “true” (alēthēs) 23 of the 26 times in the New Testament.  Here Jesus declares that His teaching is a true prophetic statement, the very words of God.  The proof of that truth was the volume of signs (Deuteronomy18:20-22; Deuteronomy 13:1-5). Had they not occurred or had Jesus not pointed back to the Father, He would have been acting “presumptuously” (Deuteronomy 18:22), the sign of a false prophet.

John 7:28-29

So Jesus proclaimed, as he taught in the temple, “You know me, and you know where I come from. But I have not come of my own accord. He who sent me is true, and him you do not know. I know him, for I come from him, and he sent me.”

The word “true” is not simply describing fact, but also something revealed (alpha "not" + lēlanthanō "hidden"). This passage is about the process by which Jesus was revealed as the true Christ.

The application for us is that we must be likewise “true”.

The simple opposite “false” (pseudēs) is the active presentation of something fake. To do this one deceives. Recall please the calling of Nathaniel (John 1:47), where he is without that active “gile” (dolos). 

We cannot portray the perfect facade.  Jesus tore down the one that the Pharisees had put up.

John 7:19

Has not Moses given you the law? Yet none of you keeps the law. 

So, to be without falsehood requires confession.  

Another word used in this passage is translated “falsehood” (adikia).  It is either one who violates the law or one who applies the law unjustly (alpha "not" + dikē “just”).  This Jesus also uses to confront the Jewish leaders:

John 7:24

“Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment.”

To be true, then we must apply that same justice to ourselves and confess to God and to each other.  For only then can the relationship be true.

1 John 1:9

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 

Week 13 - John 6:41-71 - A Hard Saying

It was common that during a worship service at the synagog that a Rabbi, such as Jesus, would be invited to teach after what is called the “Torah Service”.  According to v. 59, this teaching happened at Capernaum.

During the Torah Service on a triennial cycle a “parsha” would be read.  On this day they may have read Parashat Beshalach (Exodus 13:17-17:16), which includes the manna account of Exodus 16, for that parsha would have been scheduled between Passover and the later festivals.  So, so during the period in which this event fell.

(Additionally, it is curious the during the three-year Jesus ministry the Torah cycle would have been read in its entirety.)

He begins by explaining that by teaching them that He was fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 54:13.  That He was God the Teacher!

John 6:45

It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me—

And that, for some, His teaching would draw them.  But what He taught was truly a "hard saying" (v. 60).

John 6:48-51

I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

That to live eternally would require them to eat Him spiritually.  This is one of the seven “I am” Statements in John.

Then by switching to “feeds” (trōgō) at v. 54,  this passage (John 6:41-71) describes it as the on-going dependence on Jesus Christ.  It is not simply an initial taste (Psalm 34:8), nor just the periodic sacrament, but he is our daily sustenance.

When you read the Lord’s prayer, something stands out.  All the rest of the prayer concerns spiritual matters, except for its central petition “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11).  

When a text like this rotates around a central phrase, the style is called chiasmus or a ring construction.  (The Psalmist also wrote in this style.  For example, “for you are with me” is central to Psalm 23).  

Many Early Church Fathers wrote of the chiastic centrality of this petition in not simply a physical sense but also spiritual (St. Cyprian of Carthage (c. 252 AD) in his Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer; Origen (c. 185–253 AD) in On Prayer (chapter 27); St. Augustine (354–430 AD) in his sermons on the Lord’s Prayer; and St. John Chrysostom).

Jesus Christ is the answer to this petition, or as Luke records Jesus when he taught the prayer a second time “Give us each day our daily bread” (Luke 11:3).

The word translated “daily” (epiousios) is unique to these two verses.  They are not simply the only two places in all of scripture where this is used, the word is not used anywhere else in all of ancient Greek literature.  This word is important.

Luke’s account already has “each day” (kata hēmōn), which is already regularly translated 18 other times as “daily”.  So, epiousios must mean something more than simply “daily”.  Without a point of comparison, it is difficult, but many scholars think it means the sustenance necessary for the coming day and echoes a bookend verse from the Sermon on the Mount:

Matthew 6:34

“Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

There are multiple accounts from the Nazi concentration camps that key to survival was saving a portion of your ration for the next day (See for example the account of Eva (Gryka) Kohan and her sister at Auschwitz).  This petition then is for that portion.

But when manna, the original bread from heaven, was given, it was collected daily and used that day.  None could be saved for the next day or it would go bad (Exodus 16:19-20).

That is, except for the day before the Sabbath.

Exodus 16:22-25

On the sixth day they gathered twice as much bread, two omers each. And when all the leaders of the congregation came and told Moses, he said to them, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Tomorrow is a day of solemn rest, a holy Sabbath to the Lord; bake what you will bake and boil what you will boil, and all that is left over lay aside to be kept till the morning.’” So they laid it aside till the morning, as Moses commanded them, and it did not stink, and there were no worms in it. Moses said, “Eat it today, for today is a Sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field.

Jesus Christ is that double-portion, our epiousios.  And not simply for today, but for the eternal Sabbath that we await and for which we need not be anxious.