Every year when Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles, comes around, I find myself returning to John 7. Maybe it is because we live here, in the land where these biblical feasts are still part of the rhythm of life. You see families putting up their sukkot—the temporary booths or tabernacles used during the feast—you feel the season changing, and suddenly a passage you have read many times doesn’t feel quite so distant.
Yeshua was here in Jerusalem for this feast, and what He said on its final day was not random. He chose His moment very carefully. John tells us that Yeshua came to Jerusalem quietly. For the first part of the feast He stayed out of public view, and then around the middle of it He went into the Temple and began to teach. By the last and greatest day, Jerusalem was full of pilgrims and celebration. And this is when Yeshua stood and cried out:
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink”
John 7:37
I think we lose something if we read those words too quickly.
The Feast of Tabernacles was a time to pray for rain.
We still pray for rain in Israel, of course, and every Israeli notices when the winter rains are late. But two thousand years ago the dependence was much more immediate. Rain meant your field, your harvest, your food. Water was life. And water was everywhere in the celebration.
There was a joyful ceremony of drawing water and bringing it up to the Temple. People came up singing Psalms and rejoicing before God, and the water was poured out at the altar. By the last day of the feast, nobody needed an explanation about why water mattered. They knew.
And then Yeshua stood in the middle of all of this and said, essentially, Are you thirsty? Come to Me. I would have loved to see the faces of the people who heard Him. Because this was a bold thing to say. They were praying to God for the water that gave life to Israel, and Yeshua took that picture and brought it directly to Himself. There is a thirst rain cannot satisfy. We know that thirst too. We see people who have everything they thought would make them happy and are still searching for something they cannot quite name.
But what Yeshua said next is the part I really don’t want us to miss:
“He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
John 7:38
John tells us He was speaking about the Holy Spirit. Notice what happens here. First I am the thirsty one. I come to Yeshua because I need Him—His mercy, forgiveness, peace, hope. Then He fills me, and the person who came thirsty becomes someone from whom living water begins to flow. I love that picture because it leaves very little room for a faith that is only concerned with itself.
Sometimes we Christians become so focused on what God is doing in our lives that we forget to look next door. Literally next door. There may be someone living ten meters from us who is carrying a terrible burden and we have no idea. Someone at work may be searching for God without ever using those words. Even within our own families there are people who need hope, and sometimes they are the hardest ones for us to see.
We don’t need to turn every conversation into a sermon. I don’t believe that helps anyone. But we should be people through whom the life of Yeshua can actually be felt. We can notice people, listen to them, pray for them, help when we can. And when God opens the door, we should not be afraid to tell them where our hope comes from.
For me, this is one of the most beautiful messages of the Feast of Tabernacles.
Yeshua did not only invite thirsty people to drink; He said that those same people could become a source of living water for others.
So as we celebrate the feast here in Israel, I want to leave you with one very simple question: Who has God placed around you? Don’t look too far away. Start there. There may be someone thirsty much closer than you think.
Blessings,
Pastor Israel
