2021.09.19

We Are Temple: Feast of Tabernacles

Festival of Tabernacles

Last week, we talked about the instructions for the Tabernacle. This week, I want to back up a bit.

The instructions for the Tabernacle were given in Exodus 25. I’d like to give you a bit of context today. Five chapters before those instructions, in Exodus 20, God gives us the 10 Commandments. This is the time right after the exodus from Egypt, where the nation is forming into a nation. It’s been a bunch of people in Egypt. Now, they’ve become a bunch of people in the wilderness. But God calls Moses to the top of the mountain and starts giving him instructions for establishing the nation and founding the nation on God’s principles. He gives the 10 Commandments, and eventually, he gives the excrutiatingly detailed instructions for the Tabernacle. Right smack in the middle of those, he gives these instructions:

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Exodus 23:14–17 NASB 2020

“Three times a year you shall celebrate a feast to Me. You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread; for seven days you are to eat unleavened bread, as I commanded you, at the appointed time in the month of Abib, for in that month you came out of Egypt. And no one is to appear before Me empty-handed. Also you shall keep the Feast of the Harvest of the first fruits of your labors from what you sow in the field; also the Feast of the Ingathering at the end of the year when you gather in the fruit of your labors from the field. Three times a year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

The people are to celebrate God three times a year with a special feast.

One of the festivals God commanded … before the instructions for the Tabernacle … was called the Festival of the Ingathering. It’s called several other names, even in the Scriptures: Festival of Tents, Festival of Booths: Feast of Tabernacles; Feast of Weeks (Sukkot – Hebrew plural of sukkah = ‘booth’). The description of this Festival is found in a couple of places in the Old Testament, the first discussion is in Exodus 23. In 2021, the Festival of Tabernacles starts TOMORROW! — Sept. 20-27, so if you’d like to celebrate I’ll help you with the basic concept:

Bookended by Shabbat-like periods of work being prohibited

In the days in between, only limited forms of work are permitted

Sukkah is the word used for the temporary structures farmers lived in during harvest time

This has come to remind Jews of the Israelite’s nomadic time in the wilderness for 40 years after the Exodus.

Even meals are to be eaten in the sukkah, and orthodox Jews still sleep in the sukkah.

“God set up the Feast of Tabernacles so that Israel, among other things, would be reminded annually of His provision of a harvest that supplied the food for the rest of the year.” – David Brickner, Director Jews for Jesus, Christ in the Feast of Tabernacles, 2006, Moody; Chicago, p. 21.

While this is a harvest celebration, the temporary booths also reminded early Jews that God was a nomad with them. He had an elaborate structure, but not a permanent dwelling … just like His people.

We Are Temple: Feast of Tabernacles

This festival was and is a very important event for Jews. In the book of Ezra, the exiles are returning to Jerusalem, and the first thing they do is not rebuild the Temple: The first thing they do is celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.

In the Western World, Christmas is a major celebration even in secular circles, even if it’s stripped of most of the Christian understanding. In Israel, that holiday is Tabernacles. You can see thousands of temporary ‘huts’ built by orthodox believers, but even secular Israelis pause during this festival each year: schools close, as do businesses and government offices. Secular families take vacations and travel to Egypt among other places.

What can we learn about God?

God provides the harvest

scripture

Mark 4:26–29 NLT

26 Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. 28 The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. 29 And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”

“…the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens.”

The farmer does hard work … but if the seed grows and produces a harvest, God deserves praise … not the farmer.

God wants his people to give him honor for the harvest

Whatever you have … it ultimately came from God

You may have plowed the field

You may have watered the soil

But only God produces a harvest!

So, whatever you have, ultimately God provided it for you.

What can we learn about humans?

We need to be reminded that everything comes from God.

We believe we’ve earned the prosperity we enjoy.

We have not!

God provides everything … and we deserve none of it!

We’ve sometimes bragged about what we have. The proper response is worship!

Everything God has provided should be reason for worship.

The money you think you’ve made and saved … God provided the means for you to accumulate. Worship him for it.

The health many of us enjoy … God provided bodies that can resist and fight the sicknesses this sinful world has brought on us. Even as we struggle against a global pandemic, Worship God for the bodies he’s given us, and the inconceivable ability to heal itself.

Our intelligence, awareness, conscious mental ability are all a gift from God. Worship him because he didn’t make us robots without free will. He gave us free will that we often abuse … and then he made a way for us to return to him. Worship him.

You and I are tabernacles.

Our bodies are temporary.

Everything about this life is so precious to us, and it’s fleeting.

Our lifetime is a blink on the radar of creation.

We can learn about humans - that we wrongly want to take credits instead of giving God proper credit and worship for all we have.

What can you learn about yourself?

You are a tabernacle!

You are:

Temporary

Rickety

Put together for a purpose

What has God provided that you take for granted?

Acknowledge it

Repent of it

Worship him.

What do you possess that you think belongs to you?

Recognize he owns it, and you’re just a manager … a hired worker.

Worship him.

We Are Temple: Feast of Tabernacles

The big takeaway from today is that worship is all about him, and us trying to engage him!

He has already engaged us, and provided all we need.

Our proper response … is to recognize that … and worship him!