Nate Jameson
10/23/24
Coastal Family Church
Coastal Family Church Podcast
Jewish Feasts - Feast of Tabernacles
[MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for choosing to listen to this message. At Coastal, we believe in changing and enriching lives through the power of the word. We pray that this message would be a blessing to you. [MUSIC PLAYING] Yeah, thanks. [MUSIC PLAYING] Green light. You can go. All right. Yes. Yeah, sad. Grandpa Floyd. So he's Floyd. What a name, huh? They don't make names like Floyd anymore. Yeah, so is my mother's father, but not unexpected, but still difficult, right? It's always difficult, grief always, and just transition. Speaking of transition, we are in session seven of eight, and sorry we have to go away here to Minneapolis here next week, but we'll be back. And we'll be back with a bang, because we're going to be finishing off the series on Sabbath. And honestly, I'm working on it right now, and that's like it's going to be my favorite one. I can just tell you right now. It's probably going to be my favorite one of all this. But just to recap where we're at, and what we did, we did four weeks in the spring, four weeks in the fall, trumpets, atonement, tabernacles. That's where we're here, and then we'll be in Sabbath. And hopefully, as we're going through some of this stuff, even songs that we're singing right now here tonight, they just become a little more richer, and they just have a little different definition to them. And it's just edges become a little sharper, and the picture becomes a little more clear as to what we're singing about. So let me pray, and we'll get into some review. Jesus, thank you for the opportunity tonight to just talk about you, and talk about what you're doing, and talk about what we can expect, and what we're going to witness, either tangibly, or participate in from heaven. And Father, we just pray a blessing over this time in Jesus' name. So to review real quick, last week on atonement, we talked a lot about the most holy day of the year, if you want to look at what it looks like, the good news is we have this thing called YouTube, and you can actually go on and type in Yom Kippur, day of atonement, a temple mount, and you can actually see the procession, and you can see the ceremonies, which is kind of crazy when you think about it, because we couldn't do that for ages, right? I mean, literally, since the last time you could actually witness that was Jesus' name, he had to be there. And I mean, the state of Israel isn't even over 100 years old. And for 2,000 years, nothing was going on in Israel, and now all of a sudden, we find ourselves witnessing this in real time. And we talked about, you know, some of the traditions, and one that I just wanted to kind of recap quick was the scarlet thread. Do you remember talking about the scarlet thread? And, you know, it stopped turning, it stopped turning from crimson to white, and this is from the Jewish Talmud. This isn't from the Christian writings, this is from the Jewish writings. And so just even apologetically, you know, it's like interesting that that kind of lines up with 30 AD, which also so happened to have a solar eclipse, right? It's kind of like interesting. You know, you make your own conclusions, but I find it all fascinating. But then the thing that we kind of left with last week was this idea of abiding in Christ and just the importance of the union of Christ. And, you know, there's a lot made out about the, you could say the crucifixion, rightfully so. There's a lot made up about the incarnation, rightfully so. And, you know, but this idea of abiding in Christ, this kind of, you know, the doctrine of union with Christ is something that it's, it kind of, I don't know, this is maybe my take, right? It seems like it kind of comes and it kind of goes. It's kind of, you know, if it's the flavor of the month, it's the flavor of the month, but it's actually one of the core tenets of what we believe. And it's one of the core tenets of what it means to be a Christian is that you now being buried in baptism, risen with Christ as a new creation, are placed in Christ in the Holies, the Holies. So you have direct access to the Father, right? That's kind of what we find in Hebrews. And I bring that up because we're gonna kind of come back to that a little bit. So if you haven't yet, you can scan, we've got a big old QR code for the slides. And that will, you can download all the slides. We can download none of them up to you. But if you need that, don't worry. I have it on paper that you can scan that here later. But to kind of reset where we're at in the timeline of things, so we're going, you know, the three main piece, Sabbath is obviously a weekly thing. But we got Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles. And I added just a little bit extra. I just want to introduce a few other new concepts and kind of build upon it here. But between Trumpets and Atonement, there's 10 days. And then kind of the biblical numbering, 10 is like a number of completion. You know, it's also the number of messy. It's also the number of your best soccer player, typically. But it's 10 is the number of completion. And so with the 10 days of A, right, there's a completion. And this is a season of repentance and so on. The day 10, there's an element of, the repentance has been complete. And now let's enter into the day of Atonement. What's interesting is you have five days from the day of Atonement to Tabernacles, which in kind of biblical numbers, five represents grace. And so there's an element of the torment has happened. And now there's grace to enter in this next season, which lasts for eight days, right? And so we have seven days for creation. Eight days is the number of new beginnings. And so we will kind of get into a little bit more of that here. And then the last thing to kind of bring up from last week is this idea of having faith in the High Priest. And I just wanna underscore this of both in the Old Testament, as well as in the New Testament, we've always had to put our faith in the High Priest for the day of Atonement. There's been no change. And it's like, oh, that should be encouraging because God's not a man that he should lie, right? He doesn't change, we do. And so he's the rock and I mold my life to the rock, right? So tonight we're talking about the Feast of Tabernacles. There's a lot of different feasts. This is not the Feast of Tabernacles. This is another festival that may or may not have happened. And this is this idea of what is the Feast of Tabernacles? Well, it's a harvest feast. It's the biblical harvest feast. And so we probably know this, or at least I do, being from Wisconsin, is many cultures have harvest festivals. It's not just Israel, it's not just the Feast of Tabernacles. This is an image of Oktoberfest. And I just so happened to come from the great state, somewhat called a nation of Wisconsin. And where beer and wine or beer and cheese, right? Flow, we're known for that. I mean, even our football team, the Packers is known as cheese heads. During the third quarter, this is how Wisconsin is. If you've never been, the Green Bay Packers, arguably the greatest football team of all time, I apologize. During the, between the third and fourth quarter, most, you know, most NFL teams have like hype music and like here, pump up the band and, you know, let's go and check all this. They play polka music and they play it to roll out the barrels, the polka songs. So Wisconsin has a huge German history, a huge German heritage. And so La Crosse, my hometown actually is ranked, nationally ranked as having the third best October fest in all of the country. And so I remember, I do remember this, wearing my little, later, hose in. And yeah, maybe I'll bring a picture next time. Yeah, we're proof, right? Show me the proof, receipts. Well, now you can just get AI to create the image. It doesn't even matter. But I remember going with my brother and my family and we go down to the October fest parade, right? And it's just this big long, you know, for our city, it was a two week celebration. And it was like, you had people coming in. It was a huge, I mean, you know, that's big economic driver. But this was like the thing that La Crosse Wisconsin was known for was having this like October fest. And so it's like, it didn't matter what you were doing. It didn't matter what sport you were playing. It's like, you're gonna go to the fest grounds at some point. And I remember doing that growing up. And I say all that to just kind of say like that's, we're used to, maybe you grew up with October fest, maybe you grew up with some other, you know, sort of harvest festival. But it's like, this is, cultures have this kind of thing. And for me, that was a very normal thing. And so just in that same way, the feast of tabernacles, this is the biblical harvest feast where it's just like, what are you doing? I'm going up to the feast. Of course, I'm going up the feast. They got, you know, the zipper, you know, roll like corny games and the gravitron thing where you like slide up against the wall and you try to like, stand straight. But this is this, that same kind of, you know, element of like, well, what are you doing? I'm, we're going to the fest grounds tonight. That's what you do in October fest in La Crosse is you just, you go to the fest grounds. Doesn't matter if you're six years old, or, you know, or six years old. It's like, you're going, you're going festing. And I forgot to bring it. I have my, my grandfather's, other grandfather's, his guys like, hold fest hat, he was big into it. But, you know, and so even like, there's traditional garb. And so maybe you've been to some of those places. I actually had the opportunity to go to like, Hofer House in Munich and visit it. And you see people and they're like, they're garb and they're doing this thing. And by the, like later, it's actually a kind of normal in Austria, like Germany, just people were in later Hosen. You'll see them walking around. But there's even like, and, and we, we kind of, that seems a little bit normal. Like if you someone in later Hosen, you'd be like, oh, that's, that's a little odd, but it's not super odd. But it's, we're just a little bit normalized to it. And so part of this is hopefully to normalize some of these things about the feast of tabernacles. And so the bib, it's, it is the biblical harvest feast. What feast, you know, what's being harvested? Well, this is the season for grapes, for figs and olives. And so if you might remember the day of atonement, the day of judgment, and there's the, you know, some people love to say that I kind of begrudgingly say, but it's like the, the fury of the wine press of God, that just happened on the great harvest. The fig and the oliver, you know, traditionally symbols for the nation of Israel, of the figs and the olives being harvested. And then, you know, Paul's got that great exposition in Romans where he's talking about us as the Gentiles being a wild olive offshoot, being grafted in. And now there's this, this olive harvest. And so even the harvest themselves are not just by chance, but they are, God uses them to teach us, right? It's considered the most joyous holiday in Israel. So it's kind of, you have this, I don't want to call it like bipolar, but it's kind of like you go from Yom Kippur, David atonement, where it's like solemn, you're fasting, sackcloth and ashes for 25 hours to now you're going to the day of atonement, but rightfully so, right? Because what we looked at is we're praying that you're, it's like your name be written in the book of life. And that's what the book of Revelation tells us, right? Is those who call on Christ, their name is. And so it's going to be a joyous, joyous holiday. And so that's what I'm looking forward to. And I think we can look forward to that in it's kind of this allegory of heaven, of being this joyous holiday. It's a thanking God for his provision and his presence. And what's this kind of thought I forget who told me, told me the sapa is kind of this idea of the kingdom has always had what it needs. And we might feel like, man, I wish I could use a little bit more, but it's, we have to kind of keep in mind that God is our good father. And he's not going to give us a snake, he's not going to give us dust when we ask for bread. He's a good father, he knows our need and he's going to give it to us exactly as we have need. And so we're thanking him for his provision. And we're thanking him for his presence. This is also the time to bring annual tithes and offerings. So if you kind of recap to our very first session, we talked about there's three feasts where all the males go up to Jerusalem to celebrate. This is the third one. So we've got Passover, Pentecost, or Sukkot, not Sukkot, Chavwot, and now we have Feast of Tabernacles. So these are the three feasts that, hey, if you're of military age male, you are going to Jerusalem, and guess what, you're also bringing with you. Paying your tithe, right? So you're paying the tithe of the harvest, of that season's harvest, 'cause each one of those are tied to a harvest, but you're also now paying the tithe for the year, which we'll get into of why that's important. It's also a big part of it is inclusion of orphans and widows. And so this is a time, this is a season of generosity, of hospitality, where there's a phrase in the Jewish community called Ushbizin. There's actually a movie on Amazon, you can download it, but it's kind of a comedy movie where there's two ex convicts who break out of prison, and they go to their old buddy who turned into a be it an Orthodox Jew, and he's trying to kind of get his life together, and then it just causes chaos in his family and his life, but it centers around the feasts of Tabernacles. And so as two friends who are a little bit more narcissistic, kind of take advantage of this code of, I'm going to help my neighbor to really just kind of drag it along. But it's the season of caring for people and the whosovers. There's multiple names, like everything else, all the other feasts, which can create confusion. So I'm going to try to refer to it mostly as the feast of Tabernacles. So you refer to it typically these five things, the feast of Tabernacles, the feast of booths. You'll see that written as that. When I first read that, I thought it was like a restaurant booth. And but it's meaning tent or, you know, Tabernacle, the feast of in gathering, you'll see it referred to as that. It's also just called the feast, because it is the most joyous, it's the biggest feast. And then it's referred to as a Sukkot, kind of in Hebrew. And the big part of it, what it's all wrapped around is this idea of the sukkah. Anyone ever been to a sukkah? Anyone been camping? You've been in a sukkah, congratulations. So this is a modern sukkah. This is something that you'll see. Like if you were to go to maybe like, you know, somewhere in like Brooklyn, over in Israel. When I was in Israel, it was actually during the fall feast. So you'd walk around the city and you'd see these little sukkahs like outside of people homes on their little patios. If they're on a balcony, they'd have like a little itty bitty one on the balcony. But this is what it kind of generally looks like as this temporary structure. And for us as Christians, this is a big part of it is remembering our tent on earth. And so the sukkah, there's a lot of elements. We're not gonna get into all of it, but just to kind of brush over like the three big categories of kind of, well, what's important to know about the sukkah? They're temporary. They're temporary structures that you erect for, you know, the feast for the time period. And just like that, our bodies are temporary. You know, we have it for this moment. The sukkah you have, you can see there's three walls around the sukkahs. Sometimes they're fabric, sometimes they're, you know, wooden, but the top, the top is never like fully complete. It's always, you can always see the stars. That's actually part of the command for like a kosher sukkah is that you can see the stars. And so there's an element of the sukkah that it's this transitory place between heaven and earth, right? Of we see it, yes, there's covering, yes, there's protection, but it's also this place where heaven can come in to earth and earth can reach out to heaven between the two. And then there's one door. There's only one way into a sukkah. And so there's actually like the world's biggest sukkah and it's like a big long hallway. And there's a little itty bitty door at the very end. And that's, that kind of what is, you know, makes for the sukkah. So for, I will just say this, a lot easier to do this in Israel when it's really nice weather in October. Pretty hard like in, you know, a Cleveland, Ohio or something like that or in Canada. If you're in the snow, but they will eat their meals out in the, in the sukkah. So there's a command to eat your meal out in the sukkah. Some people even sleep out there, but it's some remembrance for the Jew. It's the remembrance of God leading them through Israel into the promised land and God's dwelling with them during the, the wanderings. And so, but for us it's kind of the, you know, it kind of relates to this tent on earth, which is like what Paul writes about in two Corinthians five. He says, while we are still in this tent in this body, we groan being burdened. Being burdened, it's like burdened, it's like, oh man, you know, that sports injury is starting to kind of creep back a little bit more, right? Those of you who've had major surgeries, you know, it's like, oh man, it just doesn't quite bend all that it used to. And so there is a burden on our physical tent, right? Not saying not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed. I love what he writes to you, he says, so what is mortal may be swallowed up by life? And there's an element, I think, and just in how like heaven is portrayed sometimes of it's, like we're losing something. And obviously there's an element of like, yeah, I just lost my grandfather. He just transitioned into this, you know, the age to come of there's a grief there because there's a loss there of he's now there. I'm still here. But what he's experiencing is that he's not being unclothed, he's not losing, he's actually gaining. And there is, our lives will be a lull that phrase, swallowed up by life. And you see like on social media, on TikTok, on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Facebook and all this. And if you have like positive on your feet, it's usually one of two things. It's like things coming from Christians or people coming from like the live your best life now, camp, like home, where it's like, how do you have optimal fitness? How do you have optimal, like, you know, wealth planning? How do you have generational legacy? You know, it's like there's this whole camp of people on social media that are not necessarily Christian, that are planning for all those things. And those are good things, but it's almost kind of becomes this idol, right? And so it's like, I'm not, I'm not trying to live my best life now. I'm trying to live my life for Christ now for what he wants me to do. And so there's an element of that verse for me, just kind of re-oriented that no, God actually has his best is what we want. And what he wants for us is the best for us. There's also this element of the Suka and the Hupa. Anyone been to a Jewish wedding, right? There's the Hupa. And so the Suka and the Hupa are fun words to say. We need more fun words to say in Christendom. And, but there's a temporary structure. And so there's the, there's the temporary structure, right, for the Jewish weddings. It's different than the Suka. So there's a different purpose, but there's a lot of similarities of this idea of covering of God's blessing, of God dwelling and being with the new husband and wife. And that also just kind of reminds us of something that we have looked forward to as Christians, right? Which is the marriage supper of the lamb. And so if the, one of the big things from the, you could say the feast of tabernacles for us to take away with is this is, this is prophesying about the marriage supper of the lamb that is going to come. And so we're going to unpack this for the rest of the night. So remember our Jewish wedding process, our Galilean wedding process? I'm going to ask Whitney to come up here. Because the other day we were talking about weddings and we're like, how fun is weddings? I don't know if she needs that, but she said she wants to get married again. So I would say. (laughing) Right. (laughing) It's like, isn't it fun? Let's say I have another one. I know, I understand why people are doing renewing of the vowels, it's just to throw a party. (laughing) So who wants to do it? - Carolyn? - Yeah. (laughing) So if I was to be troll the Whitney, I would, we would, I'd say, I'd tell my dad, I'd say, hey, dad, this one. And my dad would go talk to Whitney's dad and they would get the deal done, so to speak. They'd get a covenant, a contract of marriage, where her family would get a copy and my family would get a copy. And then there would be the patrol though, there'd be the exchanging of gifts, right? And then there was the cup of the ceremony, cup of the promise where I would drink it and I'd say, I'm not gonna drink this again until I drink it with you in my father's house and then I give it to her and then she drinks it and that's her acceptance, right? That's her acceptance of my patrol to her. And then I give her, after that acceptance, I give her gifts, interesting, right? But then after that, we say, now's not the time, but head back, go get ready and while that's happening, I'm gonna go back to my father's house and I'm gonna start adding on a room. I'm gonna start building a new room onto my father's house and it's only complete when my father comes in and looks at me and says, the room is ready, go get your bride. And so in the Galilean culture, there, even the groom didn't know. So even myself as the groom, I didn't know when I was gonna go get my bride. I knew it was getting closer. I knew it was being, it was things were being complete but I had to wait until my father said, go get her. And then I'll go get 'em, you know? We have those little docks and puppies and they always hear noises and they bark like crazy. And so I'll just like open the door and Pippa's are like our girl dog and I'll just go like, "Pippa, go get 'em." And then she just runs out. And I imagine that's what the groom did like as soon as it goes getting, yes, right? And I think it's like, but I say that as like, I think we have to kind of like almost paint some of those pictures, right, of like, this is Jesus's heart. It's like he desires to be with us. He's not like, okay, go get 'em, it's like, oh, I wanna play Minecraft for a more hour than that. You know, it's like, like, no, like, go get it. You're just like, I'm running, let's go. And so in the middle of the night, at an unexpected hour with my father's blessing, I'd get my best guys around me and we go and we go and knock on Whitney's door. And we'd blow the shofar, right? (audience laughing) Was that pretty good? I think that was pretty good, yeah? I've only been practicing for like two weeks, for this moment. And, and at an unexpected hour, and they would blow the shofar in the middle of the night and we'd bring a chair on poles and we put the bride, this case, my bride, Whitney, on the chair and lift her up into the air and carry her to my father's house. And now, once we got there, we'd go in for an immediate seven day feast. And then on the eighth day, we would have the consummation of the marriage and we'd be married. Interesting, huh, right? Interesting, please. And that was like, you'd have to wait for like a year. I forgot that part. But this should remind us, right, of Jesus in John 14 saying, "In my father's house, there are many rooms. "And if I go and prepare a place for you, "I will come again and take you to myself "that where I am, you may be also." And this is what we see, John prophesying in Revelation as well. He says, when he's witnessing what's going on in heaven, he says, "Let us rejoice and exalt. "Let us give him glory for the marriage of the Lamb has come "and the bride has made herself ready." It was granted her to clothe herself with fine linen, bright and pure. And this shouldn't surprise us, right? Because Jesus, he talked about this in Matthew 22, right? He said, he spoke to them in prayer, he said, "The kingdom of heaven may be compared "to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son." And so he goes on in that parable to say like, "Hey, invite your friends." And the one's like, "No, I just bought a cattle. "I just bought a farm. "I gotta go do my thing." And so they all began to make excuses. And what does the father say? Or what does the king say to the servants? He says, "Go invite everyone." And so that's part of the theme of what we see with the Feast of Tabernacles. It's a time, it's a season for the whosoever's, right? To be invited in. And then we have the fine linen, right? The wedding garments that Christ gives us of in him in that parable. So we're gonna look at 10 ways that God dwells in the Bible. As kind of keeping in mind this idea, this backdrop of the marriage supper of the Lamb, that's what we're looking forward to. That's kind of the big event, you could say. But to kind of also step back and say, "This has always been there at the same time." It's not, yes, it's in the future, but it's also been there the whole time. And so 10 ways God has dwelt in the Bible. One of the first ones that comes to mind is God's dwelt with Israel. And we see that in Exodus 29.45. He says, "I will dwell among the people of Israel "and be their God." And that's kind of the root of foundation of our faith that kind of gets built on. We see Christ coming through the line of David and the redemption and all this. They say, "I'm gonna dwell with Israel." Well, what's really interesting about that word dwell outside of it being a great architecture luxury magazine. That's for real estate, I'm in real estate, so it's a terrible joke. The Hebrew word dwell, sacan, it means to settle down, to abide. And then we talked about that last week of Jesus being the wedge for the day of judgment. And then first John is talking about this in my paraphrases, like, "If we abide in Christ, the love of God "perfected in us, and that love, "having that love gives us confidence "for the day of judgment by abiding in Christ." And so we see this element of abiding is, Jesus didn't say this in the upper room of like, "I'm the vineyard, the branches abide in me, and I knew." It's like, he's been saying this from the beginning. "I'm gonna dwell with you. "I'm gonna abide with you, Israel." And so as we see this, as we go through all these scriptures on dwelt or dwelling, and maybe some are coming to your mind, it's like also just think of like abiding, God abiding in that place, and abiding really is, it's really the thing, right? God dwells in Jerusalem, we see that. Psalm 762, "His tabernacle is in Salem." Salem is another name for Jerusalem. His dwelling place is also in Zion. God dwelt in the tabernacle, easy one, that's an easy bingo one, right? Exodus 2589, he said, "Let them make me a sanctuary "that I might dwell in their midst." Exactly as I showed you the concerning the pattern of the tabernacle of all furniture, so you shall make it. Then we also see God dwelling. He goes, it's like God's kind of upgrading here. He's going from a bush to a tabernacle to a temple, and he's trading up here. And in two chronicles, seven one, it says, "As soon as Solomon finished his prayer, "fire descended from heaven, right? "The presence of God, right? "The provision and presence of God "is what big emphasis on the feast of tabernacles. "Fire descended from heaven and burned up "the burnt offerings and sacrifices "and the glory, the light of the Lord, filled the temple. "The priest could not enter the temple "because the glory of the Lord filled the Lord's temple. "It was so bright, it was the presence was so thick. "The priest couldn't even get in, right? "Is, and so we see that." Now we obviously know that Jesus ripped the curtain from the top to bottom, and we'll get there. God adwels in his appointed times. This is, you know, hopefully as we've been progressing through this here for the seven sessions so far, we've kind of seen this. He says, "These are my appointed times, festivals. "These are the appointed festivals of the Lord, "which you are to proclaim sacred assemblies." And so I just have a question. It's like, have you ever had an appointment that you weren't at? Now you may have missed an appointment that you had, but every appointment that you've had, you've been at. And maybe this is just Nate's blind faith here of when God says, "I'm gonna meet you on these things." I'm like, "Oh, I guess he's gonna be there." So I should maybe be there. God, we know this, God dwells in Christ. Like this is like the whole beginning of the book of Colossians, for in him in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, right? Colossians 2.9, for in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. And we know that Jesus, so not only just is God in Jesus and dwelling in Jesus, and Jesus is God, but now we have Jesus came to dwell with us. John 1, 4, right? This is, we kind of classic verse. And the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And we have seen his glory, glory as the only son from the Father full of grace and truth. What's interesting in that, this is obviously in the New Testament, New Testament's written in Greek versus in Hebrew. But what's interesting about even in the word in Greek that's used, sikino, it means literally to fix one's tabernacle. To fix one's tabernacle, have one's tabernacle, abide or live in a tabernacle or tent. So if I just reread that, just go back to the previous slide real quick and just say, and the word, right? The logos became flesh and tabernacled amongst us and dwelt and abided amongst us. That is Jesus, that's the incarnation. That is the celebration of the incarnation. Not only did Jesus come to dwell with us, Jesus comes to dwell in us. It gets even better, right? He's always be upgrading. Ephesians 3 17 says, so Christ made dwell, made tabernacle, sikino, right? In your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love. Not only did he come to dwell in me, he came to dwell in us, right? As the church, and Jesus came to dwell in his church and Ephesians two, just prior to that, he says, in him, you, right? You, us, being the church, are being built together into a dwelling place, a tabernacle in place of God, by the Spirit. And then obviously, you know, number 10, there's more than this, by the way, I just, 10 is completion, so I have to stop there. We will dwell with God in the future. And Revelation says this, and this is, I mean, I think we're all looking forward to this, right? And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, marriage supper of the lamb, right? And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, behold the dwelling place, the tabernacle in place of God is with man. He will dwell with them and they will be his people. Kind of sounds like God's promise to Israel, right? Be his people and God himself will be with them as their God, and then he will wipe away every tear from their eyes and death shall no more, neither shall there be mourning or crying nor pain anymore for the former things have passed away. God's dwelling place, and this is some of the benefits that we see with God dwelling with us. So there's three, there's kind of three key traditions and themes of tabernacles. I think it's helpful to understand as we kind of like get into some more, okay, well, what did it look like? What does it mean? And there's kind of three big ones. You could, you know, I probably could have spent, you know, seven days a week going through the content on this one. So I'm trying to distill it down to three at a high level here. And they're the living water, the light of God and the in gathering. And so the living water of God, one of the big things that they did, right? This is the harvest festival, keep that in the back of your mind. This is harvest festival, is they would do what's called the water libation ceremony. And maybe some of you have heard this before, maybe this is new for the first time, but there's eight days, right? And what they would do is they go down to the pool of salom, which was a spring. Now, when I say pool of salom, might be like, wait, isn't that one the leper, I got the paralytic guy, was like, hey, can I go in? And then Jesus heals me and said, yep, that's the place. So they go down to the pool of salom with their big jug and they bring it back up and they would bring it up and they'd pour water on the altar at the temple, praying for God, for, you know, for rain and for the harvest for the next year, right? So we wanna, we wanna pray for God's presence now, but also for the harvest for next year. And so it's like, okay, well, where do they get that? It's not like God commanded, go get a jug, and like pour it on, on the altar. And they got it from a couple of different places that I just wanna share with you. There's tons of them, but this idea of springs of living water. In Ezekiel 47, there's kind of this classic, like prophetic passage, particularly if you've been part of like a charismatic church ever, this is like one of those like classic verses of like ankle, and he weighs overflowing, but it says, there's water flowing down from below the south end of the threshold of the temple, south of the altar. And so when they're doing this, they're taking this jug of water, pouring it on the altar to kind of enact part of this and kind of prophesying this verse. This verse is very long, so that's why it's abbreviated. But this idea of like, they keep pouring and the water goes from ankle deep to knee, to waist, to all of a sudden now it's overflowing. And so as they're doing this, they're kind of prophesying that the presence of God is gonna become so overwhelming that you won't even be able to resist it, right? And so, and it's like, yeah, we look forward to that day, right? We look forward to that day. And it's also from Isaiah 12, 3, it says with joy, right? This is the most joyous celebration, the most joyous holiday of the year. With joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And we know salvation in Hebrew is Yeshua. With joy, you will draw water from the wells of Yeshua. Isaiah 12, 3, right? Right there. And we see this, the fulfillment of this coming in Revelation 7, 15 and 17, it says, therefore before the throne of God will serve, excuse me, they are before the throne of God and serve him day and night in his temple. And he who sits on his throne will shelter. There's our dwelling word that's just translated shelter, tabernacle with them in his presence. For the lamb in their midst of the throne of God will be their shepherd and he will guide them to springs of living water and will wipe away every tear from their eye. Amen, amen, right? But, you know, maybe when I said springs of living water, there was like one verse that came up in your mind, like, oh, that's the one. It's like, yes, you're right. That is the one we're going to talk about it right now. In John 7, it says this on the last and greatest day of the festival, what festival are we talking about? The Feast of Tabernacles. John particularly of all the gospel writers uses, the Feast is like anchoring points in his gospel and to kind of anchor us in that. And so on the last and greatest day of the festival, so we've got this big ceremony that's happening, it happens every day and then they keep pouring it on, like in, you know, kind of prophesy of Ezekiel's passage there on the last day, on the last greatest day, Jesus stood and said in the loud voice, not in a soft voice, not in a loud voice, but in a loud voice, let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them. By this he meant the spirit whom those who believed in him were to later receive. And we looked at that on the Feast of Pentecost. But so you have like, with this passage here, you have Jesus saying, I think it's fascinating, Jesus uses this tradition that, yes, it's based on biblical principles, he says, yeah, that thing, that thing's talking about me, and you want to come to me for life, you want to come to me for living water, you want to come to me because in Israel, there's also a thing called the Dead Sea, right? And why is the Dead Sea dead? 'Cause nothing flows. It's just dead, and you can, well, it's nice, you can flow, it actually exfoliates, but it's dead. And one of the prophecies of the return of Christ is that the Dead Sea will want to be again full of life, and I'll let you Google that one later. But you have Jesus saying this, and you have John tiny says, on the last day, the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus said this, this. And then John at the very end says, and later he meant this about the spirit, which relates to another festival. So you can kind of see how it's like our education of the festivals really help pull out the richness of the scripture for us, so that we can kind of get a better view. So that's one of them. The second one I want to talk about is the lighting ceremony. Have anyone heard of this one? The lighting ceremony that happened at the temple. So again, these are just brief overviews. Each one of these could be like 45 minutes on their own, but the lighting ceremony was they had this big lighting ceremony in the temple, and they had these pillars. And so maybe, it might be, there we go. So they had these pillars here that they would light, and in the Talmud and the Mishnah, they talked, it says, this is in Jewish writings, it says there was no courtyard in Jerusalem that was not lit up from the light of the lighting ceremony. It just was this massive light, like think of like, we have St. Augustine, Night of Lights, you know, and this happens, and people from all over the country, literally come to St. Augustine to go see that. Same kind of thing, they had this big lighting festival. They've had these four giant 75 foot pillars that had four bowls of oil, one in each cardinal direction, filled with oil, and the wicks were made out of the old priestly garments that were being retired from that year's service. And so I mean, it's like, again, this is not like, hey, God thus says the Lord, but it's just kind of like, this is an image, this is a shadow that kind of like, wow. Like, doesn't God call us priests? Isn't that like to be a priest rooted in the oil of the Holy Spirit, burning for him? Isn't that like a beautiful, beautiful picture? And just like, and a massive mount so that it just, it keeps illuminating? So it's like, well, what does that really mean? And, you know, this kind of idea of light, I think we all understand when it's dark, but this idea of light, particularly biblically, just real quick, light typically in scripture references God's word. Typically references hit the word of God. And so when you say like, your light goes forth, or like, you're a light onto my path, right? And you'll see that in David and the Psalms. And then he's like, there's a light onto my path and like, I'll meditate on your words. Like, well, why is he talking about those things? It's like, well, it's a very, it's a very rabbinic idea to tie light and the word of God together. And so it's like, when we're praying like, your light go forth, it's like, yes, obviously you're glory, but it's like the logos we're playing for like, the glory of God, the word of God, and the word of God came and is incarnate. And later on in the first chapter of John talks about, Jesus also be in the light. It's also when they start re-restarting the Torah readings. So in synagogues everywhere, they start back at Genesis one, right? And they just kind of go through their Torah portions for the year. And so there's this tradition where they're gonna restart the word of God on the feast of tabernacles. And it's actually when we look, when you study, if you wanna look into like Ezra, Nehemiah, it's actually one, you could say the revival that happened began is they were reading the word of God aloud and they came down to the feast of boost and they go, wait a minute, that's like now. And then they kind of scrambled and said, we gotta do this thing. And then it's like, reviving. And it's like, oh, interesting, like, we, you know, let's read the word and do it. And so then you also see this idea, this connotation of the light of God's glory and numbers. And I put this up to kind of give us a little kind of Jewish perspective here of numbers, right? This is the blessing that God gave Aaron to put on. And we've probably, you know, you've probably read this seen this, he says, but God instructed Moses to instruct Aaron to pray this prayer so that the name of God would be put on the nation, right? This is kind of like the signet of God saying, pray this prayer, we're gonna signet this covenant that we're gonna make with you. And it says, the Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face shine upon you, right? Shine, it's the shikina. The face shine upon you and be gracious to it. The Lord lift up his countenance to you and give you peace. And so I say that to like when we're talking about like the lighting ceremony and God's word and all this, like there's these elements of there's blessing, there's keeping, there's grace and there's peace in the light of God. And so we know that Jesus said this also in John eight. This is during Sukkot. This is during the Feast of Tabernacles. Later on, continuation of that same passage. He says, when Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. And so imagine Jesus saying this in the backdrop of this lighting ceremony where it's like everyone's going, they're watching this lighting ceremony happen. And they're like, it's representing the glory of God when God's presence filled the temple initially. And Jesus says, I am that light, that's me. And then we've got our song, right? This little light of mine, right? (clears throat) Key of fail. Jesus is the light of the world, Revelation 21. He said, and I saw no temple in the city for its temple is the Lord God, the Almighty, the Lamb. And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine in it for the glory of God gives its light. And the lamp is the Lamb, right? So now take that, it's like we've got the Lamb, we've got oil, we've got wicks. It's like, it kind of creates this huge, nice picture. Finally, the last third thing, just to kind of quickly go over is the in gathering, 'cause it's called the Feast of In-Gathering. You'll find a lot of traditions about it. You don't have to like research them, but there's tons of traditions, tons of Talmudic, extra-biblical traditions that are mostly kind of come out from one like the temple was destroyed, but there's one called the Lulav and the Etrag. And you'll see like, if you go back to that photo, the pine branches, or the, excuse me, the willow, the mertile, the palm, and then there's the citrus, which just looks like a giant lemon. It's like a huge giant lemon. And they'll essentially shake it, some do not, Jewish denominations take it four directions, some in six, top and bottom, but they're essentially praying for the gathering of God's people from all four corners of the world, as well as blessing those for the harvest season. And so there's this kind of, I ordered one, but Amazon didn't come on time. Just kidding, I didn't order it in time. That's the mistake. But so we see this, right? We see this idea of this in gathering, the in gathering of the people and nations. And Matthew 24 says, "And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call." We looked at this one a couple of weeks ago, but we looked at the first part. Now we're gonna look at the second part, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, right? From the four corners of the earth, it will gather the elect. In Ezekiel, we see this kind of Matthew is kind of building off Ezekiel here. It says, "Therefore, thus does the Lord God, I will gather you from the people's assemblies, assembly you out of the countries where you've been scattered. I will give you the land of Israel." I wasn't there in 1945, but I'd be curious to know those who were of kind of a big day, right? For the first time in over 2,000 years. And even today, there's a stat, there's actually more Jewish people in the land of Israel now than anywhere else in the world. And for the first time in over 2,000 years, they've been there for not even 100 years yet. Like this is fresh, you know, this concept, this idea of alia. And then we get this also in Zechariah 14. It says, "Everyone who survives of all the nations," that's a great way to start after the tribulation, of all the nations, right? This whole idea of all the nations that have come up against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the king, the Lord of hosts and to keep the feasts of boost. So I believe, I believe there's gonna be a party in heaven and it's gonna be a great time and you guys are all invited to our house at some point. I had to say that 'cause Whitney's not here right now. (laughing) And then we also have it right in Revelation 9, we see this kind of fulfillment of, and I looked and behold a great multitude so that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and people and languages, standing before the throne, before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. And so we see this kind of illumination there. And that's our command, right? Is to go make disciples of all nations, right? Starting in Jumerius, marrying to the ends of the earth. That's our command as the church, is to be the people saying, "Hey, all the all the income free "to the marriage supper of the Lamb." Because the season of the Feast of Tabernacles is upon us, right? So it's like, so what can we do as we kind of wrap up here? I say throw a big evangelism party. And I think this is the, as we get more and more into technology, and we'll talk a little bit about this in Sabbath, it's the organic relationships get a little harder and harder. Me liking your post isn't necessarily the means that me is sitting down with you and being like, "Hey, what's going on?" Oh, you know, maybe something else we have, we want a vacation or I close this business. And you're like, "Oh, that's awesome." It's a little different than me just going like, you know? I say, so throw a big evangelism party. You could say the secret's not too hard. You just get food and people and Christians and God uses it and the Holy Spirit, things happen. And so the Feast of Tabernacles of Time to get the grill out barbecue, invite the whoso lovers, just get to know them and just bless them. It's also a time for the progressive cultural dinners. So some congregations, some, well, even Jews will do this with like ethnic Jewish food, but they have like progressive dinners with ethnic food from each area, right? And it's a way to celebrate, it's a way to, you know, to kind of experience the multiculturalism that is the body of Christ, that is the church. And I think that's too, it's kind of like part of the fun and flavor of coastal, right? It's kind of a multinational church. And so we have that. Go camping, it's the camping holiday, right? You can glam, yeah, you can glam. You don't have to camp, get the AC going, get the air mattress, get it all going. Go camping. But remember, it's this kinesthetic learning, like our very first session, we talked about the different types of learning modalities. And there's this idea of kinesthetic learning, which is like learning by doing, and that's part of what we wanna do. Another big one, right? Just give missions, go missions. And it's like, if you've never been on a mission strip, I highly encourage it. It just changes the way you think. It changes how you look at the world. I remember being in India in 2012 with our church group at the time, and we go and we invite people 'cause they had like a daycare sewing center and this founded by the saint of a woman, Prem Gideon, what a name, I have a last name Gideon. And we want with like the local pastor to meet the people and the slums. And you're talking to people who are like living in a room that is the size of, not even the size of our bedroom. And you have concrete. And I remember the pastor, they're a little bolder, right? A little bolder than us Midwestern Christians, is he just kind of looked at all the Indian gods and goes, yeah, those are all fake. And this is like in an area where you get burned for stuff like that, you know? You say, yeah, that's all fake. Like Jesus is the real one. I'm just like, oh my gosh, like this is real. And it kind of like there's something about missions trips that it wakes you up to the reality of like, we are sojourners here and we're on a rescue ship, not a cruise ship, right? And if you can't go, give. Read the Gospels aloud, right? So there's this element of, or you could say book of Revelation, there's a blessing with that, 'cause it's the start of this celebration of the word of God, and then pray for God to gather as people. So just a couple ideas, but we had to kind of quickly go through that, but to leave you with this idea of like rejoicing with God, of like imagine and just close your eyes for a moment of, there is gonna be a moment where Jesus is gonna come and he says, I'm gonna come and I'm gonna take you to be with me. And it's like, what does he look like in that moment? What does Jesus's face look like? Is he excited to see you? Do you feel condemnation? Do you feel shame? What is that moment for you? And I wanna encourage you that if you're feeling shame and condemnation, that's not Jesus. He's gonna come and he's gonna come and he's gonna grab our hand and take us to be with the Father and he's gonna have this big joyous celebration of like, I don't know if you've ever had that friend who's like, hey, just come with me, we're gonna have like a really awesome time. I'm not gonna tell you what we're gonna do, but we're gonna do something fun. He's got that excitement of like, he cannot wait to show us the things of his Father's house. And this is the culmination of all things. And I think we should do that more at weddings, right? We should, that looks fun. So. (indistinct) (laughing) And so as we look forward to the marriage supper of the Lamb for us being with Jesus, let me just pray. Father, thank you so much for the opportunity to go through these seven feasts and the way that they prophesy about your coming and your returning and what you're gonna do for us. And Lord, thank you that you've given us these things, these shadows to be able to study, to look into, to get better picture of what we can expect and anticipate. And Father, I just pray a blessing over everyone here and those not here that we would know that you are, that tabernacles in the marriage supper, this is a joyous time. And we can enter into that and we can know that you look down and you're just, you're our Abba Father and you're looking at us with joy and you're looking at us and you're saying, you're gonna give us peace as your countenance raises upon us. So thank you so much. Appreciate it, we'll be here in two weeks. In Jesus name, I think I said that, are you gonna have to say that? It's not official until you say Jesus name, okay. (laughing)