Crashing Sukkot: Get In The Tent
November 1, 2026
Main Text: John 7:1-36
7 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. 2 But when the Jewish Festival of Tabernacles was near, 3 Jesus’ brothers said to him, “Leave Galilee and go to Judea, so that your disciples there may see the works you do. 4 No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.” 5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.
6 Therefore Jesus told them, “My time is not yet here; for you any time will do. 7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that its works are evil. 8 You go to the festival. I am not going up to this festival, because my time has not yet fully come.” 9 After he had said this, he stayed in Galilee.
10 However, after his brothers had left for the festival, he went also, not publicly, but in secret. 11 Now at the festival the Jewish leaders were watching for Jesus and asking, “Where is he?”
12 Among the crowds there was widespread whispering about him. Some said, “He is a good man.”
Others replied, “No, he deceives the people.” 13 But no one would say anything publicly about him for fear of the leaders.
14 Not until halfway through the festival did Jesus go up to the temple courts and begin to teach. 15 The Jews there were amazed and asked, “How did this man get such learning without having been taught?”
16 Jesus answered, “My teaching is not my own. It comes from the one who sent me. 17 Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on my own. 18 Whoever speaks on their own does so to gain personal glory, but he who seeks the glory of the one who sent him is a man of truth; there is nothing false about him. 19 Has not Moses given you the law? Yet not one of you keeps the law. Why are you trying to kill me?”
20 “You are demon-possessed,” the crowd answered. “Who is trying to kill you?”
21 Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. 22 Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. 23 Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath? 24 Stop judging by mere appearances, but instead judge correctly.”
25 At that point some of the people of Jerusalem began to ask, “Isn’t this the man they are trying to kill? 26 Here he is, speaking publicly, and they are not saying a word to him. Have the authorities really concluded that he is the Messiah? 27 But we know where this man is from; when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from.
28 Then Jesus, still teaching in the temple courts, cried out, “Yes, you know me, and you know where I am from. I am not here on my own authority, but he who sent me is true. You do not know him, 29 but I know him because I am from him and he sent me.”
30 At this they tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come. 31 Still, many in the crowd believed in him. They said, “When the Messiah comes, will he perform more signs than this man?”
32 The Pharisees heard the crowd whispering such things about him. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees sent temple guards to arrest him.
33 Jesus said, “I am with you for only a short time, and then I am going to the one who sent me. 34 You will look for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come.”
35 The Jews said to one another, “Where does this man intend to go that we cannot find him? Will he go where our people live scattered among the Greeks, and teach the Greeks? 36 What did he mean when he said, ‘You will look for me, but you will not find me,’ and ‘Where I am, you cannot come’?”
NOTES
SUKKOT: A WEEK IN A TENT
- Sukkot (Sue-coat), also called feast of shelters, booths,
tabernacles: a seven-day festival (Leviticus 23:33-44).
- It celebrates the harvest, with branches waved in great
rejoicing.
- For seven days the people lived in temporary shelters,
remembering being brought out of Egypt.
- Imagine camping in your own backyard for a week: it would
show how fragile and dependent we are, and that is exactly the point of the
tent.
- The tent recalls a tiny nation sustained by manna and
guided by cloud by day and fire by night.
- It also recalls the promise to Abraham: descendants as
numerous as the stars, and a good, spacious land flowing with milk and honey.
JESUS WALKS INTO GRUMBLING (John 7:1-13)
- His brothers urge him to go to the feast and make a public
name for himself.
- Jesus lives by God's timing, like Israel led by cloud and
fire, and goes up in secret instead.
- John 1 pictures the Word pitching his tent among people
who did not recognize him.
- The crowd's divided muttering uses the same word as
Israel's wilderness grumbling.
- The question underneath is not just about a feast but
"who is this man", standing in our midst?
WILLING BEFORE KNOWING
- Three days into the feast, Jesus teaches in the Temple,
and the crowd wonders how an uncredentialed man knows so much.
- John 7:16 (NIV): "Jesus answered, 'My teaching is not
my own. It comes from the one who sent me.'"
- John 7:17 (NIV): "Anyone who chooses to do the will
of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God or whether I speak on
my own."
- Willingness to do God's will comes before knowing whether
the teaching is from God.
- A trustworthy speaker seeks someone else's honour, not
praise from one another (John 5:44).
- The leaders who claim the law do not keep it, yet they
want to kill Jesus and call him demon-possessed.
JUDGE RIGHTLY
- Jesus points to the man healed in John 5: why be angry
that a man was made completely well on the Sabbath?
- Circumcision on the eighth day already shows some commands
outrank Sabbath rest.
- Mercy takes precedence over mechanism: wholeness matters
more than rule-keeping.
- John 7:24 (NIV): "Stop judging by mere appearances,
but instead judge correctly."
- Judge by actions and obedience, not by appearances or hot
takes.
A DIFFERENT WAY OF KNOWING
- The leaders try to know Jesus the way you would know a
rock: stand outside it, measure it, grade it.
- If we were gods, that might work, but we are not.
- We are people who live in tents: dependent, fragile
- Tent people do not come to know things by standing outside
them; we come to know first by trusting, by stepping inside and spending the
night, not by inspecting the canvas from outside.
- You do not know a person by studying them; you know them
by trusting them, and Jesus is a person, not a theorem.
WHY GOD GAVE SUKKOT
- God knows we will forget, which is why he gave the
festival.
- Inside the tent at night, reflect on the history of who
God has been.
- He knows we will struggle on the journey, starting with
longing back for Egypt (Exodus 16).
- He knows we will ask whether he is with us (Exodus 17:7)
and whether he is for us (Deuteronomy 1:27).
- Deuteronomy 8 is the thesis: God humbled Israel and let
them hunger so they would know we do not live by bread alone, and warned them
not to forget him once full and satisfied.
- Once a year, get back to the tent and reflect.
ARE YOU IN THE TENT?
- Outside: grumbling, complaining, judging how God chooses
to do things.
- Outside: "I don't understand what you're doing!"
- Outside: opinions about everyone else and no practice of
your own. Inside: focused on your relationship with God.
- Outside: "I used to have great faith, I used to hear
from God."
- Outside: Egypt nostalgia, the ex you keep texting, the old
city, old job, glory days, scrolling old photos when God wants to do something
new.
- Inside: humble, listening, trusting, active, dynamic,
what's next, lead me God
- Doing all the festival stuff without dwelling is
performing but missing the presence.
GETTING BACK IN THE TENT
- Pray one simple prayer: "God, I want to obey and
follow you."
- Do the next small obedience, not the whole journey: manna
was daily
- Today's manna looks like one apology, one act of
forgiveness or generosity, or one Sabbath rest.
- Remember he came first: Jesus comes to the feast in secret
(John 7:10), entering your camp before you enter his tent.
DO NOT POSTPONE
- John 7:25-36 - people begin discussing who this guy is,
and some believe.
- The question about going to the Greeks accidentally
announces the mission: the truth refused here goes to scattered people.
- Warning: you cannot stay on the outside forever, so do not
delay obedience.
- The big question is who this Jesus guy? And the answer is
the God who has humbly come to be with us.
- The God who pitched his tent among us wants to be known by
trusting him.
- Lean in: it is the desire to do his will that leads to
knowing him.