Words of Jesus Podcast - The Feast of Tabernacles

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

Every action, every word, every instruction from Jesus is for edification. Not every word for every person, but messages for those who "have ears to hear." Even his disciples did not understand how the Kingdom of God was to be implemented, nor did they understand how far the religious practice was in opposition to the plan of the God. Jesus was led by the Spirit. Being instructed by Jesus and led of the Spirit is our mission. One is our Shephard, even Christ. ***Ch. 54: Jesus At The Feast Of TabernaclesJohn 7:1-8:59Jesus Rejects The Advice of His Brothers To Go To JerusalemWhen the Feast of the Tabernacles was at hand, Jesus’ brothers said to him:            “Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret, if he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world.”            Even his brothers did not believe in him.            Jesus replied to his advisers:            “My time is not yet come; but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you; but me it hateth, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast. I go not up yet unto this feast; for my time is not yet fullcome.”            And Jesus continued yet a while in Galilee. But, after his brothers had left for Jerusalem, he also went to the feast, not openly but secretly.Jesus Defeats An Attempt To Arrest Him            The authorities, suspecting that Jesus was in the city, asked:            “Where is he?”            The people murmured about him. Some said:            “He is a good man.”             Others said:            “Nay, but he deceiveth the people.”            However, all were afraid to speak openly of Jesus, for fear of the authorities.  About the middle of the feast Jesus went into the temple and taught. Many people, surprised at his words, said:            “How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?”            Jesus answered them saying:            “My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me. If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory; but he that seeketh his glory that sent him, the same is true, and no unrighteousness is in him. Did not Moses give you the law, and yet none of you keepeth the law? Why ye go about to kill me?”            The people answered:            “Thou hast a devil. Who goeth about to kill thee?”            Jesus replied:            “I have done one work, and ye all marvel. Moses therefore gave unto you...

Think Red Ink Ministries presents The Words of Jesus series with Don C. Harris Hello friends, I'm Don Harris of Think Red Ink Ministries and you're in tune to the Words of Jesus series. I hope you're enjoying it as much as I am enjoying bringing it to you. Jesus had certain things to say and sometimes he talked about what he had to say. He talked about his words being spirit and life.

And I don't know if it's ever occurred to you, I know it has if you've been a part of this broadcast, that there is a difference, very, very much difference in a word that is printed with ink on a page and the word of God Himself. The Word of God is first a title that's given to Jesus Christ and to Him alone. The Bible never refers to itself as the Word of God, and so therefore I don't know that we need to do that. The reason that we don't want to do that is because if we attach the title,

the Word of God, to something other than what the Bible actually attaches it to, we might think that we are in possession of the Word of God because we own a Bible. And the fact of the matter is, that's not true at all. It would be very easy, hardly even difficult, to believe that we have the Word of God when we read our Bible,

because we've called it that all of our lives. Our grandparents called it that all their lives. And it started early on. But the truth is, is that if it's studied out if you look into the scriptures you'll find it's very very clear by the scriptures that the word of God is either a title that belongs to Jesus Christ the Son of God or it is His live words speaking

into your ear. And of course, that's metaphorical. We don't actually hear the voice of God, but we hear within our own spirit. Remember when Jesus said, he that hath ears to hear, let him hear. He wasn't talking about the pieces of cartilage on the side of your head. He was talking about having the ability to hear and to understand. And so if you have the ability to hear and understand, what you experience is the Word of God.

All right, we've been in our little book called The Words of Jesus. And today we're going to be reading from chapter 54 Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles. Do you know what the Feast of Tabernacles is? I talk about it a lot. People come out to the property or whatever and they see the facilities that we have here for RVs and our outdoor kitchens and tents and things and they say, oh do you have parties here? Well we have a party here. And it's a feast of the Lord. It's a biblical feast called the Feast of Tabernacles. And they say, oh

some people wonder what it is. Some people say, oh I've heard of that. But very few people, very few people, did I say very few? Yes, a minuscule amount of people actually believe that the Feast of Tabernacles is something to which they are, as Christians, invited. They feel like these are Feasts of old Israel. You know what? I understand what you mean when you say old Israel, but you know we're a part of Israel. Israel might be old, but we're a part of that very same Israel.

As a matter of fact, Paul calls it spiritual Israel. There is such a thing as a group of people who have indeed striven with God. They have tried to, they've, well, what does it say? It was Jacob, wasn't it, that spent that time wrestling with the angel. We've all heard the story. Left his foot out of joint. He limped for the rest of his life. But he had, as the Bible said, prevailed with God. Doesn't mean that he had victory over God.

To prevail does, in today's vernacular, when we say it today, we do mean in a lot of cases, one of victory over. But actually, it's the striving. It's caring enough to take a stand. And it's not like we're making God prove himself to us. But what it is, is it's actually, I hear it in the voice of the man who came to Jesus and said, I believe, help my unbelief. And that's where many of us are, is it not? Yeah, sure, we believe in God.

I mean, millions of people believe in God. Millions of them do. But how many of them actually strive, as Jesus said, strive to enter into that straight gate, to walk that narrow way? And it's those who have striven, have strived with God. If they have striven with God, is striven a word? If they have pursued this

and strived to enter into that narrow gate, the Bible puts them into a category. And that is those who are willing to wrestle with God. And you know you don't have to know everything. You don't have to know everything. You don't have to, you know, go to college and learn all kinds of stuff and learn all kinds of new words. And it's not a matter of education.

But buddy, when that is made real to you and you're pursuing something within yourself and you know that this is the right way to go and you don't know what's out there, what are you doing? You're striving by faith. Well, you know what you're doing is you're earning the title Israelite. It's really true. Jacob became an Israelite.

He became, that's where we first find the name Israel, he who has prevailed with God. He wrestled with God. And when we do that, we enter into what Paul called spiritual Israel. Paul was not a man who believed in God's chosen people being done, being carried out, or even understood it as something in their DNA, something in their skin color, in their hair color, their hair texture, or even where they were born.

It had nothing to do with spiritual Israel as far as Paul was concerned. As a matter of fact, you can hear him say, not all that came out of Egypt was Israel. You see, and isn't that where we are today? Not everybody who says to me, Lord, Lord, is going to enter the kingdom of heaven. So there is something about, okay, if we accept the fact that not everyone who says Lord, Lord is going to enter the kingdom of heaven,

not everyone who accepts Jesus, I hate the term, but we're using it because everybody does, to accept Jesus enters the kingdom of heaven. I assure you everyone he accepts does, but everyone who accepts Jesus doesn't enter the kingdom of heaven. It's not a matter of names. It's not a matter of words. It's not a matter of liturgical statements or things that we believe

or articles of faith or any of the rest of these kinds of things. They're not articles of faith. It's just pure old raw horse sense kind of faith. That's what this is. That's what it should be. And when we have that, we're a part of Israel. If you're a part of Israel, you have, in the parables of Jesus, he talks about the householder who made the big feast and nobody came.

Remember that? Nobody would come. And so he says, go out into the highways and hedges and find the halt and the maimed and the blind. Well, who is that? That's everybody who's not physical Israel or Jacob. They're not necessarily part of that family. And even though he views us as less than his chosen people, he looked to us and said, you can populate my table.

Well, friend, that's exactly what we're supposed to do. There's a lot more effort put into keeping Christmas and Easter than is to keep, than that which is put into keeping the feast of the Lord. We've been invited. It's an honor to be even not necessarily chosen, but allowed to keep the Feast of the Lord. And it is and can be a wonderful, wonderful thing. Something that we should look forward to every year. And Feast of Tabernacles is only one of the Feasts of the Lord. We talk about them all. And if you'd like information on this, it's in the Scriptures.

All right. Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus rejects the advice of his brothers to go to Jerusalem. Now you have to understand, I didn't write this little book. So many times I find exceptions to their suppositions and sometimes their renditions of titles and such. It's like, nah, you missed it. Let's read.

When the Feast of Tabernacles was at hand, Jesus' brothers said to him, Depart hence, and go into Judea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest. For there is no man that doeth anything in secret if he himself seeketh to be known openly. If thou do these things, show thyself to the world. Even his brothers did not believe in him. Jesus replied to his advisors,

My time is not yet come, Jesus replied to his advisors, My time is not yet come, but your time is always ready. The world cannot hate you, but it hated me, because I testify of it, that the works thereof are evil. Go ye up unto this feast. I go not yet up unto this feast, for my time is not yet full come. And Jesus continued yet a while in Galilee, but afterwards his brothers,

but, I'm sorry, but after his brothers had left for Jerusalem, he also went to the feast, not openly, but secretly. There was much more going on here than this rendition of this particular book is trying to portray. Jesus had no intention on missing the feast of the Lord. Understand this, that the entire ministry of Jesus Christ

was done under the constraints of the Old Testament and Old Covenant the law of God, if you will. There is no way that Jesus was deciding not to go to the feast because it was a commandment, three times a year, all thy males shall present themselves before the Lord. God made it very, very clear that these feasts were not voluntary

things that you can do if you feel like it. These are things that I want done in Israel. He made certain provisions for people that couldn't, but no provision was made for anybody who wouldn't. There's a lesson in that. And so his brothers said, let's go up to the feast and let's show them the miracles that you do every place else now to that jesus is saying you have to understand that the time for me when he says it's not yet come he's just saying that this is not a time

for this not the time for this his time had certainly come he was here on the earth he was doing miracles he was touching people's lives his time had come but his disciples still did not understand and i believe it's contained in the scripture that says even his brothers did not believe him. I believe that it's contained in that, that they do not understand and many of us yet today don't understand being led of the Spirit of God.

To be led by a compulsion of law, of the way things are supposed to be. Many of us, we don't live under any law. Man, we skirt the laws of the state we live in, much less the laws of God. We do skirt these laws. We try to go around them. We make excuses for ourselves.

And there is no way that Jesus is saying, I am not going to the feast. So what exactly happened here? You know, I'll tell you what. The calendar issues that are involved in keeping the Feast of the Lord are intense. And it's very, very profound what he has shown us as to how we are to keep these feasts and when they are to be

kept but suffice it to say today you have to understand that jesus had no intention on following the calendar of the pharisees of the sadducees the the Sanhedrin, the religious leaders of that day, he had no intention on following their calendar. His intention was to follow the calendar that his father laid out, that he laid out in the Old Testament to the children of Israel. His intention was to follow that calendar. If that calendar and the calendar of the Pharisees didn't snuggle up together, he chose his father's calendar. And this is why it was two days before he actually went to the feast

because he was following a different calendar. Very intense and detailed study. Listen, if you would like to learn about the Feast of the Lord, the calendar of the Lord, I have a DVD that you will, it's one of those DVDs you're just not going to give away unless you've got another copy because it's so full of information

you're going to go back to it over and over again it's called the creator's calendar and you can have it just simply by writing to info at thinkredink.com give us your address and we'll be glad to send it to you the the creator's calendar dvd and it talks about this very subject that we're talking about now. Why Jesus didn't go to this feast. Why he waited two days. What was going on at that particular time. Very interesting study. And it's all right there in the scriptures. So when it says that his brothers didn't understand or when it says that they did not believe in him it's really more so that they didn't really understand

a lot about why he does what he does, which is really a nice lesson for us, actually. Many of us say that we believe in Jesus, but we don't know anything about what he does or why he does it either. We don't know what's important to him. We know what's important to us. We know what our church won't put up with.

We know what our pastor doesn't like. We know what the church board doesn't like. We know a lot of stuff that is really secondary to what is acceptable by Christ christ what's not acceptable by him and i just think that needs to change and you're probably finding that it's changing already as we continue talking about the words of jesus what you're going to find is is that pretty soon you're going to start thinking red ink which is going to put quite a strain on your on your religious relationships relationship to

church denomination and unfortunately even your Christian brethren because you're going to find that not everybody's interested in what Jesus had to say and there's certainly fewer that are interested in living their life the way he said to live it. Here, the next title under this is Jesus Defeats and Attempt to Arrest Him. The authorities, suspecting that Jesus was in the city, asked, Where is he? The people murmured about him. Some said, He's a good man. Others said, Nay, but he deceiveth the people.

However, all were afraid to speak openly of Jesus for the fear of the authorities. Do you understand how ubiquitously, how completely, how the Jewish leadership, the religious leadership blanketed that whole area with

the warning, you'd better not get caught believing in this guy. We don't want to hear what he has to say. We don't want to hear about his miracles. We don't want your opinion as to whether or not he's the Messiah. You're not going to speak of this man. If we catch you speaking of this man, we're going to put you out of the synagogue.

Now, friend, that's like being excommunicated if you're a Catholic. That's like being shunned if you're of some of the Protestant denominations. Some of the, not to saddle the Amish with this necessarily, but I think it's the Amish that have the practice of shunning people. But many of us who've ever had a mind of our own, many people have never experienced this because not many people have a mind of their own. But it is not uncommon for people who think for themselves to find themselves on the outside of their church looking in.

Sometimes it's pretty subtle. Sometimes nobody there really has the guts enough to say we don't want you to come back here anymore. So they just treat you badly and talk badly about you while you're there. But some churches actually shun people. But you have to understand that when they say you're out of the synagogue, you're out of the synagogue, you're out of the temple, you're out of Israel, this is really devastating to the Jew.

It would be as bad if you happened to believe that there was some priest or some pastor or some religious holy man walking around that had the ability to erase your hope of salvation and he did it. And he cursed you or he took from you your everlasting reward. And you believed it.

Now, you'd have to believe it. And they did. You know how devastating that would be? This was such a wide practice that you find Jesus saying, listen, you need to understand. I'm the good shepherd. I know who my sheep are.

And I watch over them and I look over them and I make sure everything's fine. And what did David say? He says, we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand. And here you have Jesus saying, when you're in my hand, no man can pluck you out.

Now there's people who have taken that scripture literally saying, when you're in my hand, no man can pluck you out. Now there's people who have taken that scripture literally, and I'm not against literal interpretation if it's theologically possible, if it's logically possible, if it's commonsensically possible, but a lot of literal interpretation is done by fools that don't understand anything. And there are people who take the scripture where he says, if you're in my hand, no man can take you out. They use that as some kind of backing or bolstering of their doctrine of eternal security. And, you know, I've tried to argue it with them,

you know, what good does it do and uh and say you can't take that scripture literally oh yes i believe in a literal interpretation do you really oh yes amen hallelujah thank you jesus or whatever they do to make you think that they're really really christian and really, really educated. And I ask them, so no man can pluck you out? Well, are you a man, they'll ask. So you really take this scripture literally to the hilt. Oh, yes, amen.

So a woman could take you out? Well, no. Well, wait a minute now, brother. You're adding to the Scriptures. You can get into those arguments with those kind of knuckleheads if you want to, but it's a waste of time. Just tell them, all right, go ahead, believe whatever you want to believe, and go do your thing.

To me, I'm just going to obey the Lord. And let's take the Scripture for what he really meant let's take the scripture according to what he was trying to tell us there is not a soul there's not a person on the earth that you need to worry about as far as your relationship to me whether or not you see the inside of the kingdom of god or not can i back up there is one person you need to worry about and that's you you're the one that's going to mess this up if it gets messed up there's nothing that anybody from without can do there's nothing to worry about you don't have to make sure that your pastor likes you or that the preachers like you or the denomination accepts you or the pope has blessed you or the cardinal or the priest or the whatever has touched you or you've got the right necklaces on or the right tattoos or whatever it

is your denomination uses to make you feel good about your eternity it's not about that at all it's all about relationship with jesus christ believing that he's real believing that what he's doing he's doing for a reason that's what this brother's had trouble believing and and i hear jesus all the time in many different ways telling us you know i do what i do for a reason and you know when i do something you need not think that it was me who decided to do it you see when i'm telling you you need to obey me and do what i say to do then i'll call you my disciples if you do whatever i say what did one saved always say people do about that? Don't know,

don't care. But if you will obey me, then you can be my disciple. I demand that of you. There's a reason why I demand that of you. My father demands that of me. So much so, I don't even decide who needs to be healed. I've walked past blind people and never touched them. Why? I was never told to. It's not me that does the works. It's the Father. He doeth the works. He's a perfect and prime example for us as to how we're supposed to live and how we're supposed to take our orders you know what that is believing in jesus that's believing in god that's the faith that everybody asks you if you have and you insist that you do even though you may or may not practice what i'm talking about right now if you want to If you want to say you believe in Christ

and be able to prove it, the Bible has advice for you. Okay, fine. You say you have faith and you don't have works. Good luck. Good luck showing anybody what your faith is. I'll tell you what I'm going to do, the apostle says. I'm going to show you my faith by my works. Our time's gone already. If you would, I'd appreciate

getting an email from you. Let me know who you are and where you're listening, how you're listening to this broadcast, internet, television, radio. I'd love to know how you're hearing it. You can email me at don at thinkreading.com. All right, until next time, think reading, my friend. Bye-bye. You've been listening to Don C. Harris of Think Reading Ministries. Email don at thinkreading.com. That's thinkc.com. That's ThinkRedInc.com. Join us again for the next episode in the Words of Jesus series. you