Celebrate the Festival of Sukkot for seven days after you have gathered the produce of your threshing floor and your winepress. Be joyful at your festival—you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, the foreigners, the fatherless and the widows who live in your towns. For seven days celebrate the feast to the LORD your God at the place the LORD will choose. For the LORD your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete.
-Deuteronomy 16
Shalom, Tabernacle folks! Judah here.
Sukkot, the feast of Tabernacles, began this week and we’ll be celebrating together as a congregation today, Friday 5pm at Jesse Himango’s house in Prior Lake. Map here.
Join us for a some sukkot building, music, short teaching, and food!
Sukkot is called "the time of our rejoicing" – it’s a feast where God commanded us to rejoice before Him for a full week, and then some. God commanded it like this in the Torah:
- To rest on Sukkot (Lev 23:34-35)
- To rest on Shemini Atzeret (last day of Sukkot) (Lev 23:36)
- All born in Israel must dwell in a Sukkah (Tabernacle) for seven days of Sukkot (Lev 23:42)
- Rejoice before the Lord with branches from palms, willows, and other luxuriant trees (Lev 20:40)
- To bring additional offerings on Sukkot (Num 29:13)
- To bring additional offerings on Shemini Atzeret (Num 29:35)
- To appear before the Lord in Jerusalem on Sukkot (Deut 16:16)
- Not to come empty-handed, to bring your own offering on Sukkot. (Deut 16:16)
- To rejoice on Sukkot and bring an offering to God (Ex 23:14)
- All Israel must hear the Torah in Jerusalem on Sukkot on the Jubilee year (Deut 32:12)
The most famous way to keep Sukkot is to build a sukkah (temporary shelter), and to decorate it with the branches of palms, willows, myrtles, olive branches, and other shade trees. In fact, when Israel returned from captivity and heard the Torah read to them, this is precisely what they did. (Nehemiah 8:13-18)
Sukkot has special meaning for the future. Zechariah 14 prophesies that when Messiah comes and saves Jerusalem from her enemies, every family on earth, from all nations, will go up to Jerusalem every year to celebrate Sukkot.
Can you imagine that, fine Tabernacle folks? Every family on earth, from every nation, going up to Jerusalem to celebrate Sukkot with Messiah? What a spectacle! And what a joyful time that will be for us, Messiah’s disciples.
Come celebrate Sukkot with us tonight, 5pm, for a time of rejoicing. Bring some branches to decorate the sukkah, bring some food to share, and bring your joy as an offering to God through music and praise.
See you then, fine Tabernacle of David folks.
-Judah
