The things that we need from God

The Feast of Tabernacles: ’What things do we need‘?

In John 7:37, Jesus promised to provide the things that we really need. What things do we need to satisfy the great desire in our hearts? Jesus taught that we need these things:

We need God to forgive us

We have done wrong things. We need to be sure that God forgives these wrong things. Then we will not worry any more about them.

• The woman at the well needed this (John 4).
• King David, who had ruled long ago, often needed this (Psalm 51).

We sometimes try to forget about our sin. Or, we try to hide our sin. But we need God to forgive us. And we need to know that God has forgiven us. Nobody else can satisfy us. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can help us (1 Peter 2:24).

We need power to live as God wants us to live

If we ask God to forgive our sin, we must then start to obey him. We need power to obey him, and to please him. We want to be free from sin. We want the power to do better things. We want the power to live good lives. But Jesus provides this for us also.

If a plant has no water, it will not grow. At last it dies. Water is essential for life. Our spiritual lives are like that.

In John 7:37 Jesus said that he was essential for spiritual life. Jesus is essential. Then our spiritual lives will succeed. And we will please God. Jesus was referring here to the Holy Spirit (John 7:39).

We need love

We also need to have love. We need to know that someone loves us. But nobody loves us more than Jesus. He died for us so that God could forgive us.

There are other things that we need

We could add many more things to this list. We need to feel safe. We need to have a purpose for our life. We need excitement too. Only Jesus can give us all these things. And he also gives many other things to us. People could not understand all that Jesus said. He would die and become alive again. Then more people would understand.

The reaction to Jesus' words in the temple

In the temple he could not say things plainly. But what he had said was enough for many people. The rulers of the people had sent soldiers to arrest him. The soldiers went back to the rulers without him. ’Nobody ever spoke like this man‘, they said.

The rulers still wanted to kill Jesus. Nicodemus was one of the rulers. He had visited Jesus in secret (John 3). Now, Nicodemus tried to protect Jesus. Nicodemus said that the rulers should not judge a man. Instead, they should first bring that man to a court. The judges in the court would decide if the man was guilty or not. But the other rulers did not listen to Nicodemus.