Stepping Up - Session 4

Session 4 - A Fruitful Vine

This session focused on The Feast of Tabernacles.  It is another session that I highly recommend that you watch or listen to.  Truly fascinating! I can't begin to restate everything that fascinated me about this session, so you should see it for yourself.  However, here a couple points that stood out to me the most.

This feast was one of three times the Jews came together.
Deuteronomy 16:16 Three times a year all your men must appear before the LORD your God at the place he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles.

This would have included Jesus and is the Feast he is attending in John chapters 7 and 8.  During the festival there would have been thousands of lights in all the huts or shelters they were staying in.  But at end of the Festival all these lights would be gone, but the wonderful sight of it would be fresh in their minds.  The morning after the festival ended was when Jesus said this...
John 8:12 When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, "I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life."

In the session Beth Moore spent a considerable amount of time describing the celebration of water pouring and how it would have been the climax of the festival.  The rejoicing was at its peak and even the priests were dancing without restraint.  It was a time that they would have been praying for the Messiah to be sent and also for God to send them rain in the coming year so their crops would grow.  Again, you really should see the session because she does an amazing job at setting the stage of what the level of festivity and rejoicing would have been at this celebration of water pouring.

It was at this very time of the festival that Jesus said this...
John 7:37-38 On the last and greatest day of the Feast, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him."

And yet, they still did not recognize him as the Messiah!