What is the Feast of Tabernacles?

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Editor

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John 7:37-39

This week’s scripture is only three verses, but they can be a confusing three verses—especially for modern audiences with little or no knowledge of Hebrew culture. After all, the events of John 7:37-39 happened in another time, culture, language, and (for many of us) country!

These questions are about ‘context,’ the second of the six questions we always ask when reading the scripture. Context questions include all the things we don’t know off the top of our head when reading scripture—places, people, reasons, festivals, etc. Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a degree or an expensive library of theology texts to answer questions of context. All you need is a Bible, a prayer, and a willingness to learn.

If you have a question about context, you will want to read the passages that come before and after your scripture. The more you read, the more you will understand. Take John 7:37-39 for example. If we go back and read John 7, we will find the answer in the text:

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. 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”(John 7:1-3).

Jesus stands up on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles. But why is this information important? Obviously Jesus’ audience seems to have made some connection between Jesus’ words and this festival—immediately after hearing him, people begin to debate about whether he is the Messiah or not. What are we missing?

What is the Feast of Tabernacles?

The best method of understanding scripture is building a repertoire of scripture during your daily devotion time. If you do this, you will find yourself identifying relationships between scriptures that you would have otherwise overlooked.

By applying this method, you’ll discover that Leviticus 23:33-43 explains what the Feast of Tabernacles (also known as Sukkot) is. Every time you find a different scripture that relates to your passage, you should look it up—it often sheds a different light on your original scripture. In Leviticus 23, for example, we learn that the Feast of Tabernacles is a joyous and festive occasion in which the Jewish people look back and remember their ancestors’ Exodus.

During the Feast of Tabernacles, people would construct and live in temporary houses, called Sukkah. They would eat, sleep, and live life in this Sukkah. Every morning, they would also travel to the temple to attend the Water-Drawing Ceremony, or the Simchat Beit Hashoeivah.

Every morning, water would be brought to the Temple from the Pool of Siloam. A priest would pour this water upon the altar and the people would joyfully shout Psalm 118:25-26. When Jesus stands up to speak with the crowds, this ritual has already happened seven times. The Jewish people had shouted the Psalms, lived in temporary shelters, and thought of the Messiah for seven days.

How do we know that they thought of the Messiah?

Psalm 118:25-26, the passage that the Israelites shouted each morning, included mention of the Messiah: “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” This is because the Feast of Tabernacles is not only about remembering the past; it is about looking forward to a future in God’s kingdom when no one will have to live in a temporary shelter ever again. Naturally, then, they thought of the Messiah who would bring this new world into being.

Then Jesus stands up.

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” he says. “Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’”(John 7:37-38).

For modern readers like us, this might be confusing. John explains to us that Jesus is talking about the Holy Spirit (John 7:39), but this doesn’t explain why the Israelites know exactly what Jesus is talking about. How could they possibly conclude that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah from his claims of living water?

If we return to the Old Testament, we will find that there are several scriptures where “the Spirit of God” is associated with water. Isaiah 44:3, for example, says, “For I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground: I will pour my spirit upon thy seed, and my blessing upon thine offspring” and in Zechariah, we find the following:

“It will be a unique day—a day known only to the Lord—with no distinction between day and night. When evening comes, there will be light.”

“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.”

“The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name”(Zechariah 14:7-9).

When the Jewish people heard Jesus speaking of living water, they knew Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah. This is why they begin to debate the truth of his claim.

Jesus is offering an amazing gift. As Christians, we know that the gift can only be given through Christ’s death, resurrection, and ascension. This gift is the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Here’s a question for you: If you could choose Jesus being physically present or the Holy Spirit living within you, which would you choose? The intuitive answer is Jesus, but Jesus assures us that this isn’t true. In John 16, Jesus says, “But I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away; for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will send Him to you”(John 16:7).

Jesus tells us that having the Holy Spirit living within us is much better than having him be physically present among us. If this is the case, the Holy Spirit must be very special indeed.

Scripture tells us that it is through the Holy Spirit that God makes his home in us. John 16:13 says:

“When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth, for he will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak, and he will declare to you the things that are to come.”

Like Jesus, the Holy Spirit does not tell us what he wants to tell us—he only tells us what he hears Father and Son saying. How do we know this? The Nicene Creed tells us this: “[the Holy Spirit] proceeds from the Father and the Son.” Through the Holy Spirit, we are given a relationship with God.

Going to church every Sunday is wonderful. So is attending Bible studies or listening to Christian teachers. And there is something even more wonderful than these things: learning from the Holy Spirit. Scripture says that the Holy Spirit will teach us all things about Christ. The Holy Spirit spoke through the prophets, and inspired the writers of the scriptures—without the Holy Spirit, we cannot understand the scripture.

The Holy Spirit helps us to understand the mind of God. He is the reason why Christians experiencing great suffering and persecution can be filled with such joy and love. He gives us life, sanctifies us, and helps us to pray. Through the Holy Spirit’s instruction, we become more like Christ.

Although the Holy Spirit is the most misunderstood member of the Trinity, he is also vitally important. Through the Holy Spirit, we learn that our God is not a distant God. He is not an abstract principle. He is involved in every aspect of our existence—so much so that he lives inside of us.

Jesus tells us that the Holy Spirit will be given to all who believe in him. It is interesting to note that Jesus says “who believes” and not “who has faith.” Believing is a verb—not a noun. Believing is not a mental assent. Even Satan knows that Jesus died, resurrected, and ascended into heaven. Does this make Satan a Christian? Of course not. Believing is more than just knowing.

Believing means (1) knowing God’s word and (2) doing God’s word. Sound strange? Let’s consider an analogy. I know that brown rice is healthier for me than white rice. I’ve read several reports of how brown rice supports healthy sleep patterns, weight loss, and energy levels. But if I know this and only eat white rice, it doesn’t matter what I know. Matthew 7:24-27 tells us that our relationship with God is very similar.

Jesus calls for us to actively believe in him, not to passively acknowledge him. Perhaps this is why he calls the thirsty to come to him rather than declaring that he will come to all who are thirsty.

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What Is Christ Doing Now?

Posted on June 22, 2017 by Editor

To watch other Voice of the Martyrs videos, visit the Voice of the Martyrs Video Page!

John 17:1-11

Here’s a question for you: Jesus died, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven—then what happened?

Most of us know what happened to the apostles—they continued to teach others “to observe all that Christ had commanded” (Matthew 28:20)—but what happened to Jesus? What is he currently doing? Is he twiddling his thumbs in heaven while waiting for us to join him?

This is a difficult question, but we can find the answer in Romans 8:34-35:

Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

After Jesus ascended into heaven, he began to intercede for us. He began to pray on our behalf. It is interesting to note that Romans 8:34-35 says that Christ intercedes for us and not that he interceded for us. This means Jesus is continuing to pray for us. How often does he pray?

Let’s turn to Hebrews 7:25:

Therefore [Jesus] is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.

Continually. Jesus prays continually on our behalf. Can you imagine praying on someone’s behalf every day of your life? All day? Not once a month. Not whenever you happen to remember. Every day. All day.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to be underwhelmed by this truth. Jesus prays for us. Great. That sounds like something Jesus would do. But think about it for a moment. The God who created the heavens and the earth is praying for you. Every day. In fact, 1 John 2:1 goes as far to say that Jesus is your advocate!

How amazing is that?

Would you like to know how Jesus intercedes for you? Turn to John 17:1-11.

At first, it doesn’t appear that this scripture has anything to do with us. After all, in John 17:9, Jesus says that he is praying “for those whom [God] has given [him].” Doesn’t this mean that Jesus is praying specifically for his disciples? Not quite. If we continue to read this passage, we find that Jesus adds, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message” (John 17:20). Because the apostles were faithful to spread Christ’s message, we can share in this prayer. Jesus is praying for us!

What does he pray for us? First, in John 17:11, we can see that Jesus prays for our protection. “Holy Father,” Jesus prays, “protect them by the power of your name.” Protect us from what? John 17:15 shows us that Jesus is asking God to protect us from “the evil one.”

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.

The world is a dangerous place for Jesus’ disciples. As Jesus once said, “If [the people of the world] persecuted me, they will also persecute you” (John 15:20). The world is not a spa. It is a dangerous place in which only our suffering is promised.

Despite this, Jesus does not pray for God to remove us from it.

What trust this shows! If Jesus did not trust the Father, he would have begged God to remove us from all danger. However, he does not ask for our removal—he asks for our protection. Jesus trusts God to protect us from all hazards.

It is interesting to note that many of the early church fathers believed that the world would fall apart without God’s intervention. God, they thought, was the only force that held the world together. Whatever parts composed the world, God was considered the force that actively held these parts together. If this is the case, then our continued existence is a testimony to God having heard, and accomplished, his Son’s prayer.

Jesus also prays that God will sanctify us (John 17:17). Sanctify is a word with a two-part definition. First, sanctify means to “set apart.” What does this mean? It means that Jesus is asking God to designate you for a specific purpose. Still confused? Let’s look at a simpler example.

You may not know it, but our Pastor Tim is quite the soda connoisseur. Not only did he run a blog dedicated to reviewing various sodas, but he also made his own! These days, Pastor Tim does not drink soda much; however, in the past, Pastor Tim was quite particular about his soda.

You see, Pastor Tim couldn’t just use any glass when he drank soda—he had to use the glass. There was nothing special about this glass that would make it a soda glass—it was just like the rest of Pastor Tim’s glasses. However, Pastor Tim specifically chose that glass for his soda drinking purposes. He refused to drink soda from any other glass and he would not fill the glass with any other beverage. In other words, he set the glass apart from all other glasses.

We are the soda glass. Christ asks his Father to sanctify us—to set us apart—so that we might be used for a specific purpose. Just as Pastor Tim considers his soda glass to be different from all the other glasses (despite there being nothing otherwise unique about it), Christs considers us different from the rest of the world. On our own, we are “just another glass.” However, Christ specifically asks for us to be set apart. This is what makes us unique.

Christ’s request for us is a little different from Pastor Tim’s glass, however—we don’t say that Pastor Tim “sanctified” this soda glass. This is because the definition of “sanctified” has another part to it.

Sanctify also means “to purify.” An object that is sanctified is both set apart and purified. What does it mean to be purified? For us Christians it means that we become increasingly like Christ. Christ’s prayer, then, is for God to set us apart from the world so that we might be filled with the Holy Spirit and become more like our Lord.

Finally, Jesus asks God for something curious.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one (John 17:11).

Last week, we marveled that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are so united that they constantly choose to lift one another—instead of themselves—up. They do this without complaint. Even in this passage, we find examples of this unity. In John 17:5, Jesus reveals that he once possessed great glory, but that he relinquished this glory to be born as a man. John 17:10 shows us that the Father and the Son share all they have. This is an amazing unity—and Christ asks his Father that we might participate in it.

Part of engaging in this unity, as John 17:17 showed us, is to become more like Jesus. We must learn how to lower ourselves and intercede for others. Paul echoes this instruction in 1 Timothy 2:1, saying, “I urge, then, first of all, that petitions, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for all people.”

This is astounding.

Not only are we called to pray for ourselves (or for those who we love and admire), but we are called to pray for all people. This means that we must pray for the politician that we hate, the teachers that we consider to be above ourselves, and the enemy that hurt us. Why? Because Christ has asked that we be set apart to become more like him; a man who prays for those who persecute him—constantly.

Not only does Christ pray for us, but the Nicene Creed reminds us of the scriptural promise that, “He will return again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.” The one who prays for us constantly is the one who will return and bring us to himself, so we can be where he is (John 14:3).  His intercession will give way to his presence, and our imperfection to his perfection.

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Life as Sagyeonghoe: An Excerpt from Living in the Underground Church

Posted on June 20, 2017 by Pastor Foley

(Tonight I finished writing the introduction to Living in the Underground Church, the third volume of our Underground Church series. The book is due out in November, but I’m eager to share this excerpt with you. You can find Volume 1 of the series, Preparing for the Underground Church, and Volume 2, Planting the Underground Church, on Amazon or directly through VOMK. But for now, Volume 3 exists only on my computer and in this excerpt!)

 

In many ways it could be said that for Christianity to continue to survive and advance into the next, more hostile and restrictive generation in Korea, it must return to the practices of the very first generation of Korean Christians. Here I am not referring to the generation of Korean Christians who emerged from the Great Pyongyang Revival of 1907. Instead, I am referring to that generation of Korean Christians from whom the Great Pyongyang Revival emerged: The Korean Christians of 1873 through 1906.[1]

Much is known about this first generation of Korean Christians by historians, but little of it is taught to ordinary Korean Christians today, and, grievously, almost none of it is held up for emulation by Korean churches, missionaries, or Christians. Yet the life and practice of this first generation of Korean Christians were so transformative, so unprecedented in modern Christian history, that they were the focus of books and articles and study in America and Europe well before the Pyongyang Revival ever happened.

This book is not the history of this pioneer generation, though it contains some of their stories in order to help us reclaim and recover that original form of Korean Christianity—a Christianity without ordained pastors or pulpits or church buildings or denominations or money or legal standing or government permission or public acceptance.

Instead, the focus of this book is what was the focus of their Christianity: The Bible.

So focused were the first generation of Korean Christians on the Bible that their religion was described by the newly-arrived foreign missionaries as “bible Christianity”.[2] The first Korean Christians were not the converts of those foreign missionaries. Instead, they had been converted by the Bibles they read and the Korean colporteurs who smuggled them in—colporteurs who were new converts to Christianity themselves.

These first generation Korean Christians did not simply read the Bible as one of many Christian activities in their life. Reading the Bible was their life. For them, sagyeonghoe (bible examination meeting) was not a special annual event led by a pastor or distinguished guest speaker. It was a daily event engaged in by each Korean Christian as they attempted to make their way through this “strange new world of the Bible” they had entered. As Korean church historians Sebastian Kim and Kirsteen Kim explain,

Once Korean Christians accepted the Bible as their sacred text, it was reverenced as the authority above others. Students read it in the Confucian manner; aloud, memorizing texts and reciting them, and then following its teaching literally in daily ethics, moral conduct, and matters of socio-political principle. People accepted the texts as authoritative, without critical evaluation or consideration of their validity in the context of Korea.[3]

What does it mean to be a Christian living in the underground church? It means that life becomes sagyeonghoe. It means that as we read the Bible in the place we currently live, among the people we currently know, we awake from our sleep like Jacob and say with him, “Surely the LORD is in this place; and I knew it not.”[4] It means that we read aloud, memorizing the Bible texts and reciting them, and then following their teaching literally in daily ethics, moral conduct, and matters of socio-political principle. It means that we accept the texts as authoritative, without critical evaluation or consideration of their validity in the context of Korea. It means that we undertake this single task as the length and breadth of our Christian life, with the same intensity, focus, abandonment, and allegiance to God as did the earliest Korean Christians.

The purpose of this book is to provide a simple method for living that life, which, as we will see, always leads one perpendicular to the world and thus, inevitably, underground. The method laid out here is not one especially drawn from the first generation of Korean Christians or even from underground Christians. In fact, Bible reading methods that are particular to a time or a place or a people or a pastor are rightly suspect. A Bible reading method should do nothing more or less than place us in the proper relation to the text and its Triune God. From that point, as Karl Barth says, “There is a river…”

There is a spirit in the Bible that allows us to stop awhile and play among secondary things as is our wont – but presently it begins to press us on; and however we may object that we are only weak, imperfect, and most average folk, it presses us on to the primary fact, whether we will or no. There is a river in the Bible that carries us away, once we have entrusted our destiny to it—away from ourselves to the sea.[5]

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Action Step

What can I do today to put into practice serving and learning from our persecuted brothers and sisters?

For the earliest Korean Christians, the Bible was not only theologically central to their faith, but practically central to their lives. Spend time to read your Bible every day and, when you read, think about how you can adapt your everyday life to the “strange new world of the Bible.”

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[1] 1873 is the year Missionary John Ross began to sell Chinese language Christian books at the Corea Gate. See J. Ross, Mission Methods in Manchuria. London: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1903, p. 17.

[2] BFBS (British and Foreign Bible Society), The Leaves of the Tree: A Popular Illustrated Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society for the Year, 1906-1907. London: Bible House, 1907, p. 70.

[3] S.C.H. Kim and K. Kim, A History of Korean Christianity. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015, pp. 87-88.

[4] Genesis 28:16, KJV.

[5] K. Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man. Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publisher, Inc., 1978, p. 34.

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