With the Feast already half over, Jesus showed up in the Temple, teaching. The Jews were impressed, but puzzled: “How does he know so much without being schooled?” Jesus said, “I didn’t make this up. What I teach comes from the One who sent me.
Jn 7:14-16
The feast talked about here is Tabernacles. Jesus before the feast was pressured by his brothers to go up to Jerusalem and “come out of the closet”. Not to teach and do miracles in Galilee any longer, but go into the open and become famous at the epicenter of Israel. He refused to do so and only went to Jerusalem afterwards, when his brothers were gone, in private.
But then, when the feast was half over, he started to preach at the temple, and again the people were astonished here about his wisdom and knowledge – just like some 18 years earlier when he as a twelve year old talked to the priests. Then he told his mom that he had to be in the house that belonged to his father. Now he taught his father’s message.
The feast season of Tabernacles starts with the Feast of Trumpets and continues in the Day of Atonement. After that Tabernacles itself begins and lasts for a week. The feast was half over when Jesus started to teach.
We are in a time of change, a third reformation is going on. Silently. Many people around the globe hear the message of God, the trumpets blowing. The trumpets of the finished work, the early and latter rain together, the manifest sons of God, the laying on of hands in authority, the restoration of the fivefold ministry. The message of Tabernacles.
Some might feel pressured to trumpet it into the world (pun intended). But there has to be an answer first – the Day of Atonement and the days leading up to it. A solemn time of repentance, of setting apart, of forgiveness. And still: silence.
As we recall, Tabernacles talks of God living in our midst. Half of this feast was passed. God first has to dwell in his church, and only in a prepared church, in a company of Sons, in a sent people he can sound forth his message in authority and fulness. What did Jesus say? “What I teach comes from the One who sent me.”
And he goes on: “If any man is ready to do God’s will he will know the teaching and where it comes from – from God or from myself.”
Is he talking about his listeners? Of course. Whoever listens to a message, and is in God’s will, discerns whether the word given is by God or the speaker. But he is also talking about the speaker. Jesus himself, as well as we teachers and preachers today will know without doubt that what we speak is the teaching, the word of God.
That is a mature teaching. That is coming into a Samuel blessing: no word he spoke fell to the ground. No addition by myself, nothing to my own honor, no fraudulent intent. There is nothing left of childishness. Or how Paul put it:
When I was a child, I spake as a child, I felt as a child, I thought as a child: now that I am become a man, I have put away childish things.
1Co 13:11
How were things in the season of Passah? It was all about me. I was a little child, asking for healing, blessings, food. Then I grew in Pentecost and it was all about doing. What can I do for God? But was the underlying question not more like: “How is he going to use me?” Sometimes even we were sure that God needed us, that we knew better.
But in Tabernacles we put away childish things. It is about his will. It is about becoming a son first to be like him and becoming a father for others. It is about becoming a man. Even one man: Christ – he the head, we the body.
Half way through the Feast of Tabernacles. It is when we mature, when we grow together, and grow into the full stature of Christ that we will sound forth the message of the father, the one who sent us in great authority. No title needed. No education, bible school necessary. Just a relationship, maturity and a sending.
The story continues and Jesus relates to himself healing a man on the sabbath day. Actually he says:
Are you angry with Me because I made a man whole and healthy on a sabbath?
Jn 7:23b
He made man whole and healthy – one man, Christ, as the undetermined article is not there in the Greek. And he did it on a sabbath, the seventh day. He did it on the day of rest, from a pasture of rest, for on the seventh day God rested.
Jesus healed and made whole on the cross. But it takes a process for man to realize this and work it out. It is not before man comes into full realization of the finished work, not before man comes into maturity and rest that everything that lays in the cross manifests. What is set in heaven has to be established in the earth.
This is the season. I am looking forward, no, I am groaning and longing for the sons of God to be manifest and come forth, together with creation.
I would not want to live in any other time.
How about you? Send me a comment.