7:1-24 At the Feast of Tabernacles

March 8, 2021

Read John 7:1-24

This is the only section in John 2-12 which does not begin with a miracle as a sign. Instead, the sign is provided by the Feast of Tabernacles (Shelters). This joyful harvest festival called to mind the forty years when the Israelites had lived in shelters in the wilderness during the Exodus from Egypt (Lev.23:33-43; Deut.16:13-15). It had two special features: on each of the seven days there were ceremonies of drawing water and lighting lamps in the temple, and these are the signs which pointed symbolically to Jesus as the water and the light of life (7:37-38; 8:12).

The healing of the man on the Sabbath in Jerusalem (5:1-9) had not been forgotten, and the Jews still wanted to kill Jesus (1; 19-21; 5:18). Jesus had stayed away from Jerusalem not because he was afraid to die but because “the right time for him had not yet come” (6,8; 8:20; 12:23). In his own time and in his own way, he went up to the Feast (10). The crowd were looking out for him (11-13) and eventually he appeared to them in public (14), not with signs to impress them (3-4), but with teaching designed to help them reach a right decision about him (24).

The important question was not whether Jesus was competent to teach (15) but whether they were competent to receive his teaching! For only someone who is truly sincere will be able to recognise that Jesus’s teaching comes from God (17). That person will discover that Jesus is the truth whose aim is to honour God alone (18; 14:6). Healing on the Sabbath honoured the true meaning of the Sabbath law, as they should have realised (21-23). The people needed to look beyond “mere appearances” (24), not just about that healing but also regarding who Jesus is.