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Sukkot: The Feast of Tabernacles
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Festivals have always been about gathering—for music, celebration, community, and moments that make us feel alive. But what if those desires point to something deeper? God didn't just create the world and step back. He built rhythms into it: day and night, seedtime and harvest, work and rest. Long before muddy fields and headline acts, God created festivals for his people. They were moments to pause, to remember, to feast, to celebrate, and to encounter him—not to escape life, but to realign it through God-centered rhythms.
These ancient festivals reminded God's people who he is, what he had done, and what he was still going to do. Today, we're asking what these festivals mean for us now: How can they help us know God more deeply, live in greater freedom, grow in stronger community, and make a difference in the world around us?
The festival we're exploring today is Sukkot—also known as the Festival of Shelters, Festival of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles. God told the Israelites to go on an annual camping trip each autumn and live in temporary shelters for 7 days each year:
For 7 days, you must live outside in little shelters. This will remind each new generation of Israelites that I made their ancestors live in shelters when I rescued them from the land of Egypt.
Why did God ask the Israelites to camp each year? What relevance does this have for us today?
One of the names for this festival is the Feast of Tabernacles. The word "tabernacles" means dwelling. We're going to look at how the Lord dwells with us—how he lives with us. If we can grasp this profound truth at a deeper level, that God is with us personally, it can utterly transform the way we see life and the way we walk through it.
Four days of camping can be testing. Forty years camping in the wilderness is quite unimaginable. So it's interesting that even after God freed the Israelites and brought them into the promised land, he asked them to go back to wilderness-style living for 7 days each year. Why would God ask them to return to a way of life he had freed them from?
God wasn't sending them back to traumatize them. He was asking them to remember what they learned about him during that time. The Feast of Tabernacles was primarily a call to remember God's provision:
Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for these 40 years. He humbled you by letting you go hungry and then feeding you with manna. He did it to teach you that people do not live by bread alone. Rather, we live by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord. For all these 40 years, your clothes didn't wear out and your feet didn't blister or swell.
In the wilderness, the Israelites depended on God for everything. They needed miracle after miracle because they couldn't provide for themselves. But when they entered the promised land into secure homes and abundant provision, they would naturally become more comfortable. And comfort brings a danger: self-reliance.
So God established an annual rhythm. For 7 days each year, the people were to leave the comfort of their homes and live in tents, reminding them that their security was not found in their homes but in God alone. He alone was their solid rock.
This is a reminder we need too. Some of us feel like we're in a wilderness season—a time of testing and uncertainty where our need for God is in sharp focus. Others feel like we're in the promised land, in a season of stability and blessing. Perhaps it's a mixture of both. But wherever we are, the call is the same: Remember God's provision. In every season, remember that the blessings we enjoy are gifts from him, but not the source of our security. They can never satisfy our deepest longings. Only God can.
But this festival was also a call to remember that his provision came from his presence. During those wilderness years, not only did the Israelites live in tents, but God also chose to dwell among them in the tabernacle—a tent-like sanctuary right at the center of the camp. God himself was literally in the middle of them as their provision, their guide, their wisdom, their protection, and a reassuring presence in a time of testing.
I find it beautiful that the Feast of Tabernacles was an annual festival. God asked the Israelites to stop every year, to pause, to step away from their normal routines and look back, to remember how God's presence was with them.
As we grow older, the years flash by more quickly. So I love that God built this intentional rhythm into his people's calendar. I'm naturally more of a forward-thinking person, so I have to work quite hard to build intentional rhythms that help me slow down and remember how God has been with me. One way I do this is through journaling. Most mornings when I'm reading my Bible, I write down what God has been saying to me or process with the Lord anything that's happening in my life.
In recent years, I've developed a habit that every New Year's Eve, I read back through the year's journal entries. I create a mind map of all the key scriptures, moments, and ways God has come through. This really helps me see the bigger picture. Looking at the whole year on a single page, I can see how God has spoken and get a renewed perspective. Often I find myself thinking, "Wow, God, you were really there in moments I might have overlooked."
I also have another chance to reflect. My birthday is in June, and at celebratory meals, someone will often ask, "What have been the highlights of your year?" That's another great chance to reflect and recognize: "How has God been with me?"
What rhythms can you build into your year that help you remember how God has been with you? When we stop and take a pause from the busyness of our lives to look back, we often discover something we might have missed. We realize that God was faithful in moments we hadn't quite recognized. He was working in ways we couldn't always see at the time. Remembering that isn't just encouraging for our past—it strengthens our faith for the present.
The message of the Bible isn't simply that God was with his people. The good news of the gospel is that God has come near. The God who led Israel through the wilderness stepped into human history and walked among us.
One of the names for Jesus is Immanuel—God with us. John, one of Jesus' closest friends, wrote:
The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.
A literal translation of the word "dwelling" is to tabernacle. So another translation says: "The word became flesh and tabernacled among us."
God no longer tabernacled in a tent in the middle of a camp. He became one of us, tabernacled among humans in human form. This is utterly staggering.
But the good news gets even better. Jesus didn't just come to be with us during his earthly ministry. Before he returned to the Father, he promised that his very presence would remain with us, his people, through his Spirit:
I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever, the Spirit of truth. He lives with you and will be in you.
If you've said yes to Jesus, then the precious, wonderful, awesome Holy Spirit lives in you. He no longer just tabernacles in a tent or tabernacles among us in human form. He now tabernacles inside of us. God's presence is not just something around you—it's something within you. This is as close as God could possibly be.
Which means he must like us. He must really love us to choose to be that close.
This truth is one that I just find blows my mind. I still can't quite get over it. The God who existed before the foundations of the world, the one who flung the stars into space, the holy, awesome, majestic one lives in me.
What does that mean? It means that every single moment of every single day, I have:
Because God lives in me, I never face a single moment of life alone. At every single moment of every single day, God is with you. Wherever we go, he goes. Whatever we face, he's there. In every challenge, every milestone, every conversation, every diagnosis, every ordinary Tuesday afternoon, God who dwells within us is present with us.
What an incredible reality—maybe one we want to grasp a hold of again, or maybe for the very first time.
Yet if you're anything like me, it can be very easy to forget. I can forget when I'm tired. I can forget when I'm busy. I can forget when I'm pressured. I can even forget when life is going well. I can sometimes live as if I'm doing life on my own, even though the living God is present with me every moment of every day.
But I don't want to forget. I want to live in continual awe and reverence and awareness that the living God lives in me.
One thing I'm trying to do more of is stay in more constant communication with the Lord throughout the day. I'll pray: "Holy Spirit, I need your wisdom on this situation." Or "Father, what do you think about this?" Or simply "Jesus, I love you."
I've also been trying to more frequently review my days through a lens of thankfulness, asking at the end of the day: "What am I thankful to God for today?" Then I spend some time thanking him. It's amazing what it does. It helps me notice little things I missed. It lifts my mood. And it helps me restore a sense of closeness to him and his presence.
But awareness of God's presence doesn't usually happen by accident. It grows through intentional habits.
What habits can you build into your day that help you recognize God's presence with you? The invitation isn't just to believe this in theory. The invitation is to live each day with a growing awareness that he is present right now—in this room, in Cambridge, in Leicester, online—in your mountaintop moments and your very ordinary days.
God is with you.
If God's been with you in the past and he's with you right now, then you can rest assured he is going to be with you in every circumstance still to come. Whatever victories, surprises, and uncertainties lie ahead, God will be with you.
But the Christian hope goes even further. Our hope is not simply that God will walk with us throughout this life. Our faith is that one day we will be with him for eternity.
How often do you think about eternity? About life beyond this one? Maybe you don't because you're fearful, or maybe because you're focused on the here and now. Or maybe you're here exploring faith and wondering if there's even a life beyond this one. Or perhaps you do think about eternity—maybe you've lost a loved one or you look around at the state of the world and think there has got to be more than this.
The Christian message is one of abundant hope.
In Revelation 21, we read about a new heaven and a new earth in an incredible vision:
Behold the tabernacle of God is among the people and he will dwell among them and they shall be his people and God himself will be among them.
The whole story of scripture is the story of God bringing people into deeper and deeper and deeper closeness with him. This is a God who deeply loves his people, who isn't aloof, who isn't distant, but whose heart beats for his people—whose heart beats for you.
In the wilderness, God dwelled among his people in the tabernacle. In Jesus, he came and lived among us. Through the Spirit, he now dwells within us. And one day, we're going to dwell with him forever.
I have to remind myself of this more often. I have to shift my mindset. I can be so focused on what's happening right now—even good things—that I can lose my perspective. I can lose sight of the bigger picture. I can forget where the story is heading.
Because this life, as wonderful as it may be, is not the end of the story. We're not living for 70 or 80 or 90 or however many years we are gifted on this earth. We're living in the light of eternity.
The New Testament repeatedly calls us to lift our eyes to see the bigger picture, to remember that our citizenship is in heaven, that this world is not our final home. Hebrews says:
For this world is not our permanent home. We are looking forward to a home yet to come.
Chris and I love our home in Cambridge, but it isn't perfect. It's beginning to show some signs of wear and tear—cracked ceilings and peeling wallpaper. We enjoy it for now while we look forward to something even better one day.
Similarly, we live life on this earth, which has tons of goodness and tons of beauty. But there's also so much brokenness, poverty, war, and injustice. And maybe within ourselves, there's brokenness, sickness, and restlessness too.
Unlike my vague hope for a future house, for those of us who follow Jesus, there is a sure and certain hope of a perfect home that no house on earth will ever give us. A home with all the joy, all the satisfaction, all the life and peace that we could hope for:
Where he will wipe every tear from their eyes. There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain.
This is our hope. If today you want to make the decision to start a new life with Jesus, this is your future hope and your future home. Living with Jesus in a new, glorious, perfect creation where everything is just as it should be.
What mindset can you cultivate that helps you anticipate God's eternal presence?
Because ultimately, when we know how the story ends, we can face today's challenges differently. We can walk with our heads higher, with our shoulders back. We know that:
And one day we're going to be with him forever.
This wonderful festival, the Feast of Tabernacles, serves as a call for us to take time out of our ordinary days and lives to reorient our lives around his presence, to pay attention. We're called to:
We have lived, are living, and will continue to live in the wonderful, magnificent, awesome presence of God forever.
