My Favorite Power Drink Series

There are seven feasts listed in Leviticus that were given to the people of Israel. They really

determined their calendar, their timeframe. They would be looking forward to the next feast.

Each one of these feasts are important. In fact, if you look at all of the feasts, you'll see that as

they roll out they portray the redemptive plan of God. His majesty, His creation, the fall, the

need for redemption and atonement, the work of Christ, the sanctification process, the joy that

we experience all are built into the feast year for the Jewish people. We also can look at the

feasts and use them to help us determine the timeline of Jesus’ life. The three year or three-anda-half years of His public ministry we can tell about where He is in each one of the gospels

because they mentioned the feast days, and we can kind of then plot those on the calendar and

see where we are in the schedule.

There were three particular feasts that were the major feasts. I don't know if I should say they're

the major feasts or they were just really important. Because it was expected that the men from all

around Israel would come to Jerusalem and, if they could, even from other parts of the world,

would come up for these three feast days. All of them were very important days. In fact, what's

very interesting about Jesus’ coming is He transformed those feast days in some amazing ways.

So now we look back on those feast days, we see something completely different.

For example, you know Passover. Passover was that special feast that the Israelites celebrated

because there was blood placed on the doorpost, and the death angel passed over those people,

and they were rescued out of Egypt. They look back on this. “Thank you, Lord, for redeeming us

and rescuing us by your blood. When you saw the blood, the death angel passed over those

families.” When Jesus Christ came, He died on Passover to be our sacrifice, our atoning sacrifice

so that when God sees the blood, we then experience the righteousness of Christ. The whole

Passover celebration is transformed because of Jesus’ coming.

Fifty days later, there's another feast, another one of the major feast where all of the men would

bring their families because this was a special time to come together, a ceremonial experience.

One of these times when you're just celebrating with all kinds of parades and activities and so on.

Even the going up to the feast, going up to Jerusalem, which is up on a mountain, they had

certain songs that they would sing. They were called Psalms of Ascent. We have them in God's

word. People would sing the Psalms of Ascent on their way up. It was just a beautiful

experience. The Feast of Weeks, which happens seven weeks and a day, fifty days or pente.

Pentecost takes place fifty days after Passover. And of course, this was the Feast of Harvest. This

was the celebration that the wheat harvest has come in. “Lord, thank you for the bountiful

harvest you've given and we're grateful for all the things you're going to do as you continue to

bless our world. We're grateful.” That's how the Jewish celebrated Pentecost.

But God chose this day to bring down the Holy Spirit on people. And on that day, the harvest of

3,000 people were saved. The power of the Holy Spirit came down and it began this harvest that

took place all around the world. This feast day of Pentecost now has changed in our minds as we

look back on it. We say, wow, that is big.

The third feast is the Feast of Booths. That's the feast we're going to look at today because Jesus

stands up on that day and He proclaims something very important. He actually changes that day.

As He looks at that feast, at that celebration, He changes that day and what it is. In fact, I'm

going to have you today in just a moment look at the verses starting in John 7:37. We're going to

look at the whole passage today. But starting in verse 37 we have what Jesus does on that day in

the feast. We are going to talk about that.

Would you please stand with me as we read starting in verse 37 and then we'll go back to the

beginning of the chapter.

This is what happened: On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out,

“If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has

said, ‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’” Now this he said about the Spirit, whom