Appointed Times: The Fall Feasts
On the one hand, it is easy to focus on the “quietness” of God and feel neglected. On the other hand, even in the wilderness of Sinai, God’s provision for His people was abundant: water, food, flocks, shoes, and clothes. When we focus on what we don’t have (or perceive we don’t have), we loose focus on all that is being provided by a compassionate and merciful God.
This is one of the purposes of Sukkot. Once a year, the decree is that we dwell in booths and remember that God is our provider. It is a very real, physical picture we can enter into to remember how good God is. It is a pause in an otherwise hustle and bustle world, one week out of 52 to remember all that God has rescued us from, and glorify in all that he has provided.
That is Sukkot past, what of Sukkot present? In a remarkable similarity to Israel, we dwell in temporary dwellings, temporary booths—our bodies. In it, we are adrift in a wilderness relying on the provision of the Most High. Like Israel, we who confess Yeshua were freed from bondage and slavery to sin, we crossed our own Red Sea in our baptism and came into His rest on the opposite shore, the first fruits of that rest. God wrote His word on our hearts as He did in stone at Sinai, and like Israel, we wander, waiting to enter into the true Promised Land—heaven, where we will have our eternal rest.
Sukkot is also very prophetic.
Then it will come about that any who are left of all the nations that went against Jerusalem will go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to celebrate the Feast of Booths (Zechariah 14:16).
During the millennial reign, when Messiah is literally enthroned in Jerusalem, the institution of Sukkot will be more than just a spiritual picture. It will be a physical reality. In fact, it will be so important that there is a grave warning for those nations who do not follow the commandment. “And it will be that whichever of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them. If the family of Egypt does not go up or enter, then no rain will fall on them; it will be the plague with which the LORD smites the nations who do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Booths” (Zechariah 14:17-18).
Hossanah Rabbah
On the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation and present an offering by fire to the LORD; it is an assembly. You shall do no laborious work (Leviticus 23:36).
Sukkot is a seven-day festival ending with what has traditionally come to be known as the Hossanah Rabbah, translated in most English Bibles as that “great day of the feast.” Remarkably, you won’t find that name in the Old Testament, but in the Gospel of John 7:37.
Category: Biblical Studies, Winter 2000
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