Feast of Tabernacles

February 28, 2016 Background Scripture: Numbers 29:12 – 40; Leviticus 23:33 – 43; Deuteronomy 16:13 – 17; Revelation 14:1 – 5; 1 Corinthians 15:20 – 29 Lesson Passage: Leviticus 23:33 – 43 Never forget where you came from. That’s salient advice that has been passed through many generations and nationalities of people for thousands of years. It is no different for the nation of Israel. There were three annual pilgrimage festivals for Israel’s males (Unleavened Bread, Weeks, and Tabernacles). We have discussed the Feast of Unleavened Bread and the Feast of Weeks in earlier lessons. Today we turn our attention to the Feast of Tabernacles. Israel was commanded by God to celebrate the end of the grain harvest season and its offerings. Afterwards, they were required to remember where God had delivered them from. As Moses prepared the nation to be led by Joshua into Canaan, he strongly admonished them to not let their blessings from God blind them and cause them to forget their deliverance. Moses warned them that the greatest danger would come after they had been blessed. The Feast of Tabernacles was one method whereby God kept the nation grounded in reality. Again, I refer to God’s purposeful provision of mandatory “holy days” for Israel that were designed to commemorate God’s covenant relationship with the nation and to create teaching moments for younger generations. God knew that the religious rituals He prescribed for Israel would generate curiosity in young people. He used the curiosity of the young Jews to strengthen the accuracy and the perpetuity of Israel’s oral history relative to their relationship with Him. The adults were required to learn the meaning of their religious rituals and teach the meaning to the younger generations. Israel was required to gather branches from a variety of trees that were specified by the Lord to be used to construct makeshift dwellings that they were required to live in for seven days. This humbling experience was to be used as a teaching moment for their children. When the children asked concerning the ritual, the adults were to teach them that their ancestors lived in such dwellings during the forty years between their deliverance from bondage in Egypt until their occupation of Canaan. God had provided for their ancestors throughout their pilgrimage in the wilderness. Although the nation was now blessed beyond measure, they were not to forget God’s deliverance of their ancestors who had very little physical resources compared to them. I often wonder if today’s generation of children in our society would be as “entitlement minded” if we were required to relive part of our lives prior to God’s deliverance of us. I certainly believe that it would have a profound effect on many young people today. Many of them have never experienced a long term lack of electricity, telecommunications, natural gas, automobiles, and water and plumbing inside the house. Even inmates who are housed in the many penal institutions in our nation today are provided with most of these resources. In fact, under our constitutional law, it is considered “cruel and unusual punishment” to deny most of these provisions to inmates who have been deemed criminals by the nation’s criminal justice system. The Feast of Tabernacles was a religious celebration to teach Israel to never forget the deliverance of their ancestors by God. Robert C. Hudson February 22, 2016