Hanukkah (Day 5): Yeshua Goes Up to the Feast of Tabernacles

Yeshua took Kefa (Peter) and the brothers Yaakov (James) and Yochanan (John) with him. They went up on a very high mountain where they could be alone. There in front of the disciples, Yeshua was completely changed. His face was shining like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. All at once Moses and Elijah were there talking with Yeshua. So Kefa said to him, “Lord, it is good for us to be here! Let us make three sukkot, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” While Kefa was still speaking, the shadow of a bright cloud passed over them. From the cloud a voice said, “This is my own dear Son, and I am pleased with him. Listen to what he says!” When the disciples heard the voice, they were so afraid that they fell flat on the ground. But Yeshua came over and touched them. He said, “Get up and don’t be afraid!” When they opened their eyes, they saw only Yeshua. On their way down from the mountain, Yeshua warned his disciples not to tell anyone what they had seen until after the Son of Man had been raised from death. The disciples asked Yeshua, “Don’t the teachers of the Torah of Moses say that Elijah must come before the Messiah does?” Yeshua told them, “Elijah certainly will come and get everything ready. In fact, he has already come. But the people did not recognize him and treated him just as they wanted to. They will soon make the Son of Man suffer in the same way.” Then the disciples understood that Jesus was talking to them about Yochanan the Immerser. Yeshua and his disciples returned to the crowd.

Yeshua, Kefa, Yaakov and Yochanan spent the next several days journeying from the Galilee up to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles. Yeshua’s brothers, who had yet to put their faith in him, had criticized Yeshua for conducting His ministry in the Galilee, rather than in Judea where the religious leaders could see and recognize Him. Yeshua simply told his brothers that His time had not yet come to be revealed as Messiah, and that they should go up to the Feast without Him.

On the way, Yeshua stopped in Samaria. It had only been a few short months since He’d encountered the woman at the well. She had stated correctly that the leaders of the Samaritans taught that they should worship on Mt. Gerazim, while the Jews taught that they should worship in Jerusalem. It was then that Yeshua made the famous statement, “Believe me, the time is coming when you won’t worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. You Samaritans don’t really know the one you worship. But we Jews do know the God we worship, and by using us, God will save the world. But a time is coming, and it is already here! Even now the true worshipers are being led by the Spirit to worship the Father according to the truth. These are the ones the Father is seeking to worship him. God is Spirit, and those who worship God must be led by the Spirit to worship him according to the truth.” The people of Samaria responded with faith in Yeshua. He stayed with these hated outcasts for two days, teaching them about the worship of the One True God. In fact, many Samaritans put their faith in Yeshua because of what they heard him say. They told the woman, “We no longer have faith in Yeshua just because of what you told us. We have heard him ourselves, and we are certain that he is the Savior of the world!”

Now, Yeshua waited outside this city. He had sent Yaakov and Yochanan into the city to get food, just as he had before. They returned with anger worthy of their nickname, “The Sons of Thunder.” The people of Samaria had refused to sell them any food, for they had heard that Yeshua was going to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, rather than observing the Feast with them on Mt. Gerazim. “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy these people?”, they asked. Yeshua turned and corrected them for what they had said. ”Don’t you know what spirit you belong to? The Son of Man did not come to destroy people’s lives, but to save them.” The Samaritans had chosen their own form of religion, over worshipping YHWH as He desired to be worshipped.

Yeshua, Kefa, Yaakov and Yochanan arrived in Jerusalem in time for the Feast of Tabernacles, but Yeshua hid himself for several days. Even though He was hidden, Yeshua was the center of attention at that year’s Feast. The Jewish religious leaders were looking for Him. “Where is He?” they asked. And among the crowds everyone was talking about Him. Some were saying, “He’s a good man”; but others said, “No, He is deceiving the masses.” However, no one spoke about him openly, for fear of the Jewish religious leaders.

Then, half way through the Feast, Yeshua went openly into the Temple courts and began teaching. The Jewish religious leaders were shocked: “How does this man know so much without having studied?” they asked. So Yeshua gave them an answer: “My teaching is not my own, it comes from the One who sent me. If anyone wants to do his will, he will know whether my teaching is from God or if I speak on my own. A person who speaks on his own is trying to win praise for himself; but a person who tries to win praise for the one who sent him is honest, there is nothing false about him. Didn’t Moses give you the Torah? Yet not one of you obeys the Torah! Why are you out to kill me? “You are possessed by a demon!” the crowd answered. “Who’s out to kill you?” Yeshua answered them, “I did one thing; and because of this, all of you are amazed.” (Yeshua was speaking of a miracle performed several months earlier. A debate had arisen between Yeshua and the Pharisee’s in the Galilee about what was permitted on the Sabbath. Yeshua, in the way only He could do, ended the debate. He went into the synagogue, and saw a man with a shriveled hand. The Pharisees saw this as a way to trap Him, so they asked, “Is healing permitted on Sabbath?” He answered, “If you have a sheep that falls in a pit on Sabbath, which of you won’t take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a man than a sheep! Therefore, what is permitted on Sabbath is to do good. Then to the man he said, “Hold out your hand.” As he held it out, it became restored, as sound as the other one. But the Pharisses went out and began plotting how they might do away with Yeshua.) Now, Yeshua was confronting these same Pharisees and religious leaders. Yeshua continued: “Moses gave you the b’rit-milah (circumcision) – not that it came from Moses but from the Patriarchs – and you do a boy’s b-rit-milah on Sabbath. If a boy is circumcised on Sabbath so that the Torah of Moses will not be broken, why are you angry with me because I made a man’s whole body well on Sabbath? Stop judging by surface appearances, and judge the right way!”

Some of the people of Jerusalem said, “Isn’t this the man they’re out to kill? Yet here he is, speaking openly; and they don’t say anything to him. It couldn’t be, could it, that the authorities have actually concluded he’s the Messiah? Surely not – we know where this man comes from: but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he comes from.” Whereupon Yeshua, continuing to teach in the Temple courts, cried out, “Indeed you do know me! And you know where I’m from! And I have not come on my own! The One who sent me is real. But Him you don’t know! I do know him, because I am with him, and he sent me!”

By now, the religious leaders had heard enough, and they tried to arrest him; but no one was able to touch him, because His time had not yet come. However, many in the crowd put their trust in him and said, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more miracles that this man has done?”

On the last day of the Feast, Hoshana Rabbah, the people were preparing for the final and most important of the water libation ceremonies. They had taken down their sukkot, and where holding the dried palm, olive, myrtle, pine and willow branches. They lined the path from the Pool of Siloam to the Temple. The priest proceeded from the Pool up the pathway, as the people shouted “Hoshianah Na! Please save us!” He poured the water into the silver cup on the side of the altar, as the priests waved the lulav and marched around the altar seven times. Suddenly, from the Temple, Yeshua stood and cried out, “If anyone is thirsty, let him keep coming to me and drinking! Whoever puts his trust in me, as the Scripture says, rivers of living water will flow from his inmost being!” (Now he said this about the Ruach (Spirit), whom those who trusted in him were to receive later – the Ruach had not yet been given, because Yeshua had not yet been glorified.)

On hearing his words, some people in the crowd said, “Surely this man is ‘the prophet’”; others said, “This is the Messiah.” But others said, “How can the Messiah come from the Galilee? Doesn’t the Tanakh (Old Testament Scriptures) say that the Messiah is from the seed of David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived?” So the people were divided because of him. Some wanted to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him.

The guards came back to the leading priests and Pharisees, who asked them, “Why didn’t you bring him in?” The guards replied, “No one ever spoke the way this man speaks!” “You mean you’ve been taken in as well?” the Pharisees responded. “Has any of the authorities trusted him? Or any of the Pharisees? No! True, these ordinary, unlearned people do, but they know nothing about the Torah, they are under a curse!”

Nicodemus, the man who had gone to Yeshua before and was one of the Pharisees, said to them, “Our Torah doesn’t condemn a man – does it? – until after hearing from him and finding out what he’s doing.” They replied, “You aren’t from the Galilee too, are you? Study the Tanakh, and see for yourself that no prophet comes from the Galilee!”