Dennis Tuuri

We return again today to Exodus 23:14-19 for the sermon text. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Exodus 23:14-19. Three times you shall keep a feast to me in the year. You shall keep the feast of unleavened bread, and you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you at the time appointed in the month of Abib. For in it you came out of Egypt. None shall appear before me empty. And the feast of harvest, the first fruits of your labors, which you have sown in the field, and the feast of ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field, three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.

You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of my sacrifice remain until morning. The first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring into the house of the Lord your God. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for these words. We pray that your spirit would write this word upon our hearts that we might be further increased in our joy to you and in our submission throughout the rest of our lives. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

In the Gospel of Matthew upon his conversion, Jesus says, “Follow me.” And Matthew follows him. And do you know what the next thing we read about Matthew is in the Gospels, kids? Matthew has a party. Matthew has a big feast and a festival at which Jesus comes and sinners come there as well. And the Pharisees don’t like the fact that there are people there who are coming out of their sin and yet are close to it.

The Pharisees also didn’t like the fact that Matthew had them feast because they thought people should be fasting. And of course, the answer to that is that when the bridegroom is with you, you feast. Matthew is of all four gospels the one that is written most explicitly to the Jews. Over and over again, it says this is what was fulfilled from the Old Testament. Lots of Old Testament quotations. Matthew’s other name is Levi.

At the center of the book of Matthew, the Levites, the Pharisees, the descendants of the Levites, supposedly the Pharisees determined to kill Jesus. But the new Levi, Matthew, brings people to Christ in festivity, in feasting, and in celebration. Levi means to join or be joined. And the Levites were to join the people of God to God by way of celebration and the keeping of the festival calendar in the old covenant and in the keeping of the Lord’s day in the new covenant.

So the elders of your church bring you together and join you to the Lord in the context of festivity and celebration. And what we’re doing now with these concluding sermons on the law of the covenant is to look at the Old Testament pattern of festivals to help it inform our Lord’s day face and festival. All of the Old Testament calendar is fulfilled in the day of resurrection, the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day.

Now we still have these annual times of the year here that are good. Some churches practice a church calendar that’s a little more involved and simply set up for Easter and Christmas and that’s good. But the thing we want to understand is that all of the Old Testament calendar points to Christ as fulfilled in his work. And so all of these truths of these feasts we’ve been studying inform us in how we’re to celebrate the Christian Lord’s Day.

Now today our subject is the third feast, the feast of ingathering. And this is the great harvest feast. Of all the feasts, this is the most joyous of them. This is at the end of the whole harvest cycle and there is great joy in the context of this feast. This feast follows the other two feasts. And what I’ve done on your outlines, the beginning Roman numeral of your outline, number one, shows these three feasts with activities underneath them that correlate one to the other.

So in this section in Exodus 23, we read of the feast of unleavened bread, which is Passover. We read of the feast of harvest. Talked about that last week which is Pentecost. And now we’re dealing with the feast of ingathering, more typically known to us as tabernacles or the feast of booths. Tabernacles or booths are the translation of the same Hebrew word. And these are the three main feasts in the agricultural cycle of Israel in the old covenant and also to draw them to historical markers in their history.

And these three feasts inform us in terms of Lord’s day worship what it’s all about. And so this chart is an attempt to explain that.

Now before we turn to the chart, look back at the opening song we sang. Oh come, O come Emmanuel. You have your order of worship. Verse one says, “Ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here.” Now is that a reference to Passover, Pentecost, or booths? It’s Passover. You know, ransom Israel, bring her out of her captivity. Where was she captive? Egypt. Passover and unleavened bread. The first part of the cycle of the three annual major feasts was a celebration of deliverance out of exile.

Look at the second verse. Oh come, O come thou Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai’s height in ancient times did give the law. Well, what is that? Passover, Pentecost, or booths? That’s Pentecost because you know they come out and seven weeks later they’re at Sinai and God gives the law on Pentecost at Sinai, at least so it seems from Exodus and from the tradition of the Jews as well. And so you see this song is sort of tracking the cycle of what happened to God’s people in the old covenant as God redeemed them. And in doing so it hits on two of the first three major feasts.

And we could probably also then look in the third verse. Oh come thou rod of Jesse free. Thy know from Satan’s tyranny from depths of hell. Thy people save and give them victory o’er the grave.

So now it points us to the future when our victory over the grave is assured in heaven. And what we’ll see at the conclusion during the Lord’s Supper is that as we look at the ransomed host in the book of Revelation who have been martyred for Christ combined in the throne room of God in the book of Revelation, they have palm branches. So the feast of booths where palm branches are used from one perspective is showing the eschatology of our lives after our physical death we’re dwelling with Christ forever in the great feast of ingathering or tabernacles has a contemporary significance too but see that’s what it sort of moves toward. Additionally, the wilderness which is where the feast of booths relates back to in the history of Israel coming out of Egypt the wilderness is seen as the place where Satan dwells. Yeah, it’s what our savior does after his baptism he goes into the wilderness for 40 days.

Yet, Israel went into the wilderness for 40 years and he is tempted by Satan and Satan’s in that wilderness. So, this third verse seems to track pretty well with this feast of ingathering tabernacles or booths.

Now, I just didn’t plan that song for that purpose, but as we sang it, I noticed, oh, well, see, there it is. People that understand the cycle of Old Testament history or the cycle of the Old Testament agricultural year or very distinctly the cycle of the three major feasts understand this movement of history and so many songs will follow this same movement as they move forward. It’s really not that complicated is my point. It’s a set of thematic subjects that are presented to us here by way of a movement of three and three is quite easy for us to remember. Can’t remember seven. Got to work at that. Seven’s got to be a three and a four because our memories can’t do more than three or four things. We can only have a three or four wide highway in our brain. If we’re going to do seven, we got to have a couple of pulses come through.

But these threes are pretty easy here. So you see in bold type off the top of these columns is unleavened bread, Passover, Pentecost, and then booths. Now unleavened bread relates to the barley harvest in the spring. Remember the first sheaf of the grain harvest, but the barley is being harvested then. So it happens in early spring. And the feast of Pentecost is the wheat harvest, and that happens in late spring and the feast of booths is the total harvest as we’ll see when we go to the text. The fruit crops, the olive crop, the wine crop, all those things come together as well as the final grain crop in the great feast at the end of the year. So, you can see why it’s a real happy time. It’s like Oktoberfest. In fact, it’s in the seventh month, October, kind of relating to the eighth month Oktoberfest in our cycle of harvest today. So, it’s the great concluding feast, the great joyous time.

You get why now as well as bread. So that’s the way it moves from Passover or from excuse me the early harvest to the middle harvest of the grain at the end of spring and then to the harvest of all things at the conclusion of the year the agricultural year in the fall and these things. So they track a historical agricultural season which is pretty easy to remember first of the harvest end of the grain harvest final harvest and they track in the context of God’s words these events of Israel’s captivity or history rather.

Passover reminds them of coming out of Egypt. Pentecost reminds them they’re in Sinai. The first thing they get there, they get the law. And then as they move out of Sinai, God makes provision for them. Booths or coverings of some sort in the context of the wilderness, wilderness provision in the feast of booths. And we’ll see that is explicitly referred to in the text. So you see, it just tracks history. It tracks the agricultural season.

And it and it tracks as well we there’s really a summation this I think in these concluding verses of the text that we just read. Look at verses 18 and 19 of Exodus 23. You shall not offer the blood of my sacrifice with leavened bread, nor shall the fat of my sacrifice remaining till morning. What feast is that talking about? Passover, Pentecost, or ingathering? Unleavened bread harvest or ingathering to use the three names of Exodus 23.

Well, it says don’t sacrifice unleavened bread. That verse is talking about the feast of unleavened bread. It capsulizes it. Verse 19 says, the first of the first fruits of your land you shall bring into the house of your Lord. Now, is that unleavened bread? Is that harvest? Or is that ingathering? Well, it’s harvest. The first year fruits got to bring the first fruits. Time of harvest. Those two loaves that have become leavened loaves. First of your harvest comes in them.

And that leads us with the third section of these two verses. You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk. Well, what does that relate to? If the pattern here is one of encapsulating these three feasts, then we’d want to see some correlation between that obscure phrase and the feast of harvest or not harvest but ingathering or tabernacles. This great joyous at the end of the year festival and you know, maybe one correlation, and I’m going to preach a whole sermon on this goat and milk stuff, but one proper correlation the commentators have pointed out is that, you know, it doesn’t say you can’t boil a kid in milk.

It just can’t be in the mother’s milk. The mother’s milk gives life to the kid. And you can’t mix the life of the mother with boiling the kid in death. And so, the idea is that this last festival of the three, this feast of ingathering, this feast of booths and tabernacles is a great joyous festival and it is all life. So it’s supposed to be particularly marked by great joy or festivity. So these texts themselves kind of give us a flow a reminder again of the emphases of these three main cycles.

Now in the next set of occurrences under these columns so this would be row five. We have first sheaf resurrection correlated with Passover and unleavened bread. Remember we said that Passover and unleavened bread go together and that’s where the first sheaf the harvest is way of just a little sheaf and that’s the resurrection of the savior. Okay. and then we said that the Pentecost reminds us the New Testament association is with ascension.

Jesus raises up first sheaf. Then by Pentecost he’s ascended. So the spirit is given and the law is given to God’s people. So it’s the ascension of Christ to the right hand of the father that’s connected with that.

Now with the feast of tabernacles, the Old Testament feast correlated to it are trumpets and the day of atonement. In other words, in that seventh month, in addition to tabernacles, you had the feast of trumpets. Below the trumpets bring people together, day of atonement, repentance of sins, moving away of uncleanness, moving to cleanness. And then finally, the end of that was this great feast of rejoicing, the feast of tabernacles or booths. And it talks about the process by which the world will be converted. Jesus is raised from the dead. But that’s not enough. He’s got to go to the right hand of the father so the spirit can come.

But it’s not over. That’s the beginning. The nations are typologically represented as converted as they meet at Pentecost. The preaching of the word happens. But the process then is the spirit and word are going to work its way through all the world till we have this great feast of engathering at the end of the whole cycle. So it tracks New Testament time as well. These three feasts resurrection ascension and then the whole world will move in the context of the nations being discipled and all the nations will come in for the great feast of engathering and we’ll see as we go to these texts that’s a significant element of the feast of ingathering.

The nations in Zechariah are commanded to keep the feast of tabernacles.

Now we keep all of these feasts when we keep the Lord’s day but they all inform what our Lord’s day activities are all about. We can relate the same process. It’s not that tough. Barley harvest, wheat harvest, final harvest, deliverance from sin, receiving of the spirit and law, and then the great culmination of rejoicing with before God in the threshing floor and the wine press, as it’ll say in Deuteronomy, bread and wine rejoicing.

That’s how our service moves. That’s how we worship. We come together and we confess sin at the beginning. It’s like Passover and unleavened bread and Christ is raised up. So, we confess sin and we’re forgiven of our sins. And then the law is preached. We moved in the last in the first 15 minutes of the service. We move from Egypt to Sinai. We move from Passover and forgiveness of sins to the giving of the law of God and the spirit accompanying that on the Pentecost feast in the New Testament.

So the law is preached forth. The spirit accompanies it. It changes who you are. You respond to that change. And then we move from Pentecost at Sinai to moving into eventually the promised land. The end result of all of this is that great joyous feast of harvest. God providing for us as we move toward our heavenly home and we have communion together where we eat the bread and drink the wine. So see it’s this same flow.

God restoring glory or weightiness to the people that have sinned and forsaken the glory of God. God restoring true knowledge in the context of Pentecost and Sinai to his people and the giving of the word through the spirit empowered preaching of the word. And then finally, the great joy we have in life, God gives us life at the communion table.

When your children sin and when you sin, you either want false glory, false knowledge, or false life. You want life, you spend your money for bread, but it doesn’t satisfy. Isaiah 55 says, “Why do you spend money for what is not bread, and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear, and come to me. Hear, and your soul shall live. And I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David.”

Or, I’m the source of life. You want to have a good time and you just want to leave that Christian stuff behind while you rejoice and celebrate. And God says, “No, it’ll turn to crud in your mouth.” That kind of life. You want truth. So you read the news. You listen to the gossip shows. If you’re really, you know, in rebellion against God, you become a Gnostic. You seek false knowledge. You draw pentagrams. You try to have God tell you things through a Ouija board. You want to know what’s going on. What’s the stock market going to really do? How am I going to know?

And God says, I want you to have knowledge, but I want you to have it mediated through my word. You understand economics, turn to my word. You want to understand childbearing, turn to my word. You want to understand how to lead your servants in business or to be a good servant to your master, turn to my word. That knowledge I’ll give you, but you got to come to me. It’s mediated.

And we want to be glorious. We want people to say, “That’s a good guy. I want his opinion on things. I respect him. He’s got weight in my mind. Man, he’s heavy.” We want glory properly. So, we’re made in the image of God to want all of these things. God says, “I’ll give you glory.” But you fall short of glory when you sin. And you make yourself light and worthless.

Become heavy by accepting forgiveness of sins and by remembering that you’re a sinner, confessing that sin to me, and I’ll restore personhood to you. I’ll make you a solid person. So, we’re to train ourselves calls away from the sins of seeking false glory and false knowledge and false life, unmediated glory, knowledge in life. And we’re to train our children that the way to become an important person, the way to become a knowledgeable person, the way to become a rejoicing, life-affirming person is in mediation through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. We practice it every Lord’s day. To the extent that we follow the church calendar, the whole cycle is repeated. To the extent we know this stuff from the Old Testament, all of these things are reiterated over and over and over because we need to hear it.

Glory, knowledge, and life. God brings it to us in the context of our worship. That symbol, it’s patterned after these cycles of the Old Testament. And I list the offerings here in the Old Testament worship. You come together to worship and the first thing you do is you’d purify that worship environment. You’d confess your sin and then the ascension offering would go up. And with that there’d be a tribute offering to God. And then at the end you’d get the peace offering, get a meal with God.

And we go through the same things. That’s why we worship the way we do because we see ourselves in this pattern of confession of sin, cleansing the worship environment as it were, pleading Christ’s blood at the beginning of our service and then ascending up to receive that word from him and in response to that word bringing our tribute offerings, our tithes and offerings and then moving at the end of the day to God seating us down and saying, “Okay, now we have a meal together. Now I empower you for what I’ve called you to do.”

You can sort of understand it this way. We kneel to confess sins. We if we could here we would. And then we stand to hear the word of God and then we sit at the table resting to being empowered by his grace. So there’s a confession of sin, there’s the sermon, the offering, and the prayer. And then there’s the Eucharist and commissioning as we go out from this place. So that’s the flow.

These three feasts are important for structuring our worship service, for reminding us why we sin, for assuring us that God acted historically in this pattern in the church in the wilderness, bringing it out, giving it law, moving it ahead, and assuring us that he’s doing that same thing as Christ recapitulates that life, his ascension is the first sheaf. Day of Pentecost, the church gets that law of God and then we empower it to preach the gospel into all the world. So the three feasts are just keep this outline review it occasionally. This is the way the world works. This is the way history moves. This is the way your life moves. This is the way the worship service moves. We go through this cycle of confession and then empowerment through his word and then the gift of God’s life to us that we enjoy the feast of booths.

Okay. Okay, now let’s look at some specific biblical texts and look at some particular emphases of this last of the three feasts, the feast of booths or ingathering here called the feast of ingathering.

Okay, first of all, Deuteronomy 16:13-17. Turn there real quick. There may come a day when we don’t have to turn our Bibles. We can listen real well, but I’m not there. I don’t know about you. If I listen to the Bible on tape, I don’t catch much. I got to look at it still. I don’t have good listening skills.

Look at Deuteronomy 16:13-17 and we’ll see some aspects of the feast of gathering. This is one of those sections that deal with this feast of booths and gathering. Verse 13 of observe the feast of tabernacles seven days when you have gathered in from the threshing floor and from your wine press. You see how it correlates to the third movement of our service, the threshing floor and wine press, bread and wine. It’s like the culmination of the joy of all the festival seasons. This is the grace, the feast of all feasts. This is the joy time.

Verse 14, you shall rejoice in your feast. You see the joy. Wine is added to bring fullness of joy. You, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, Levite, stranger, fatherless, the widow. Big party. Matthew calls them all together to feast with Christ. The Levites call you together today to feast with Christ. And the culmination of the feast is the Eucharist.

You see the Eucharist. And God says the correlates to this feast of tabernacles which had great joy. Everything’s been gathered in. Now the wine is added to the bread and we have joy in the context of this feast and it’s a joy that includes all of the families in the context of that joy. It’s an acknowledgment as verse 15 says that the Lord your God will bless you and all your produce, all the work of your hands so that you shall surely rejoice.

You labor for the goal of joy. The joy of the Lord is our strength for the joy that was set before him. Our savior endured the cross. Why are you going to go to work tomorrow? Why are you going to endure trying to train those children or teach them? Why are you going to work to get out those weeds? If there’s no sense of culmination and harvest and fruition, then you don’t have the joy that will drive your duty.

Your duty is premised on this joy that God will provide for you in the context of your work and you rejoice before him.

One other point here. And I’ve made this point before, but Deuteronomy 16 tells us explicitly that at these three festivals in verse 16 and 17, don’t come before the Lord empty-handed. Bring an offering. Okay. Now, I think that again what we’re looking at here is that these things inform our Lord’s day. So, our Lord’s Day activities are activities of great joy and fullness of feasting, particularly at the third part of our worship, the feast of tabernacles, the communion, the Eucharist of our savior. But what this also tells us is that if they were to go to the three feasts not with empty hands and is this is if the Lord’s day is the culmination of that then it seems to me to be an appropriate application that you shouldn’t come before the Lord in formal Lord’s day worship services empty-handed.

You know I think it’s best and I don’t have not been consistent in doing this with my own children but I think it’s best to try to give them allowance or pay for work and train them to put a part of that aside every week so that when they come before the Lord and hear the word preached, they can bring that tribute offering, their body, of course, as they come forward. But don’t come to the Lord empty-handed. Bring a nickel, bring a penny, bring a dollar, bring something as you come before the Lord to always remind yourself that your production has been granted by his grace.

And to say that the end of that is the joy that we have on this day. And we have this idea of bringing forth our offerings, not empty-handedly, but coming before God joining with bringing an offering to him. So I, you know, I think a proper application is to break I don’t know how you get paid, but to break up your pay so that you give something every Lord’s day. So you’re always coming forward with your bodies in response to the preached word. You’re never just sitting there saying, “Oh, that’s interesting.” See, I mean, I know that’s not what you’re saying, but you see, it’s a physical action that moves us in terms of proper response to God’s word. And that’s told us explicitly in Deuteronomy.

Now turn to Leviticus 23:34-44. This is an interesting section dealing with the feast of tabernacles. Leviticus 23:34-44. Now what’s interesting here is that there are two sections here. Verses 33-36 talk about the feast of tabernacles. And if you look at that, you’ll see that it emphasizes rest. And verses 39-44 goes over Feast of Tabernacles again and this time the emphasis is on joy and mission to the world. It’s a future orientation.

Okay. So verse 34, tell them the 15th day of the seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles, seven days. First day there should be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work. Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire. Eighth day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall take an offering offer an offering made by fire. It is a sacred assembly. You shall do no customary work in it. So first of all, this tells us that this feast of tabernacles is actually an 8 day long festival.

Now again, biblically that’s what it is, right? You move from a seven to an 8. Jesus doesn’t get raised up on the seventh day, but on the eighth day, the first day of the new week, the scriptures move from seven to 8. 8 is the completion of time. And if there’s any festival we’d expect to go on for eight days, it would be that great rejoicing festival of booths at the end of the cycle. And that’s the one that does.

But here, notice that several times it says that in the context of that feast don’t do any work. Rest is emphasized. Now why does Leviticus bring that emphasis of rest? Because you know Leviticus the immediate context is Sinai and they’ve just come out of Egypt where they had no rest. The big movement in terms of Moses is to bring the people from no rest to Sabbath rest. And so Leviticus stresses and by way of proper application to our Lord’s day observance rest in the context of the Lord’s day.

Now, Matthew, I mentioned Matthew’s gospel, and it’s like the Old Testament gospel, all Old Testament quotations. And what you see the Savior doing in Matthew is bringing people into Sabbath rest. He heals on the Sabbath. He removes the oppression of the Pharisees slap Egyptians and moves them into Sabbath rest. So, the feast of tabernacles has this element of rest to it.

But, Leviticus goes on to talk about it a second time in verses 39 and following. And here it says, “When you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep the feast of the Lord for seven days.” So now it’s not just bread and wine, it’s the fruit of the land. It’s the olives. It’s all the crops are harvested at the end of the year. So tabernacles is this great harvesting of all the different crops. And in verse 40, we’re told something we weren’t told in Deuteronomy.

You shall take for yourselves in the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast. It shall be a statute forever in your generations. You shall celebrate in that month that your generations may know that I the Lord that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

So here in addition to the joy and the two fruit, two harvests of grain and wine, here we have the further harvest. You know this is the end of all the harvest time. Our Lord’s day observance includes this aspect of rest and it includes the idea of joy in relationship to mission because he points us in the context of telling their children in the future what’s going to happen. So tabernacles in the Lord’s day points us to the future in terms of our children and it brings in this concept of booths.

We’re going to talk about this in a couple of minutes but just a couple of brief comments here in Leviticus it says make booths out of branches. Now these are not tents. These are not, you know, canvas tents. They’re lean-to structures made out of trees. And it says because God provided booths in the wilderness for the people. So, we know the general idea is provision. But where did God provide lean-tos in the wilderness? You know, I don’t know because I don’t think it’s ever recorded that he did it. And so, it’s kind of a wonder to us. What does that mean that he provided booths in the wilderness?

I don’t ever remember account of that. And actually, if you have 600,000 men, which is what who came out of Egypt, with their wives and children, well over 2 million people probably in the desert in the wilderness to come up with that many lean-tos. We have a problem with that and we’re going to address that problem a little later on. But this text brings into mind the idea of booths.

Third text is found in Nehemiah 8:23 and following. Turn there briefly please. Nehemiah 8:23. Actually this is in the 7th month and we’re told in Exodus and Leviticus this is the seventh month feast of tabernacles. So what we have here is an example of what goes on in the restoration of the people in Ezra and Nehemiah. And in chapter 8 verse 6 Ezra blesses the Lord the great God. Then all the people answered amen. Amen. While lifting up their hands. See, corporate lifting of hands and worship goes on in the context of Ezra and Nehemiah in several places. They bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

And then verse 13, on the second, this is Nehemiah 8:13 and following. On the second day, the heads of the father’s houses of all the people with the priests and Levites were gathered to the scribe in order to understand the words of the law. And they found written in the law which the Lord had commanded by Moses, the children of Israel should dwell in booths, during the feast of the seventh month, and that they should announce and proclaim in all their cities and in Jerusalem, saying, “Go out to the mountain, bring olive branches, branches of oil trees, myrtle branches, palm branches, branches of leafy trees to make booths as it is written.”

So, here they’re going to do it. You know, we’ve talked in this church about how Josiah, good King Josiah, rediscovers the law. And what’s happening in evangelicalism today is that there’s a rediscovering of God’s law. And there’s degree of sorrow. You know, Josiah rend his garments because he knows he’s violated God’s law. And we’ve come to the position of appreciating the whole word of God and recognizing that we’ve walked in ignorance, but nonetheless in disobedience to the law of the covenant in many ways.

But this recurring retelling of the law reminds us that another aspect of our rediscovery of the law in the context of being reformed evangelicals is that we’ve rediscovered feasting and festivities because the law instructs us in these things. And it tells us that our Lord’s day must be a day of great rejoicing and tabernacling in the presence of God as these occurrences in Nehemiah tell us.

Goes on to say, “The people went out, brought them, made themselves booths, each one on the roof of his house and the courtyards, the courts of the house of the God, open square, the west gate, and the open square, the gate of Ephraim.” So, you know, if they’re going to come to all go to Jerusalem, well, here they were there already, but later they’re going to go to Jerusalem celebrate the feast of booths. Booths are going to be going up all over the place. That’s what it tells us here.

And then it says that so the whole assembly of those who had returned to the captivity made booths sat under the booths. Since the days of Joshua the son of Nun that day the children of Israel had not done so. And there was very great gladness.

That’s what Lord’s day service is all about. Very great gladness is the culmination of our Lord’s day service.

Day to day from the first day until the last day he read from the book of the law of God. Now, why did he do that? Because we’re told in Deuteronomy 31, that in the sabbatical year, at the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the feast of tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses, you shall read the law before all Israel in their hearing.

So, Nehemiah combined with Deuteronomy tells us that another aspect of our Lord’s day worship service is the reading of the law. Now see remember we got Passover, Pentecost, booths, Pentecost, Holy Spirit comes, law is given at Sinai. Spirit writes that law upon our hearts and at tabernacles every seventh year the law was read. So the law is prominent in both of those last two festivals. The law is what moves us and moves the culture of God from the ascension of Christ giving of the spirit and word to the culmination of the gathering in of the nations.

You see the law for and after. And as we’ll see in a couple of minutes, the spirit is also emphasized at both festivals. Okay? And this law is given that the people might hear that they might learn to do these things. They might fear the Lord their God and do that’s what which is written. And so the law is given on the context of the feast of tabernacles in the seventh year.

Now in some Jewish circles or Messianic Christian circles in the context of the feast of tabernacles, they keep the last day as the feast of the law. And they’ll take the Torah and they’ll dance around and they’ll have a great procession and they’ll move in these circular dances that are referred to by the very terminology feast or festival means to move in a circle and they’ll celebrate the law of God and their liturgical year in Judaism would be ended because the Torah has been read for the whole year and the Torah will begin to be read again because tabernacles kind of marks the end of the year and the beginning of the year.

And so the law is a great deal a part of this celebration. And so in our worship services and in the rejoicing in our homes that come from these services, the law of God is prominent. The law of God is prominent. Is the law of God prominent in your home? Do you place a stress on the scriptures in your home?

See, that’s really I think the point of this is that for and after of the great movement of God’s people to disciple the nations, we have the law because the whole thing permeates that. And so our children should be brought up to love the scriptures, to read the scriptures regularly, and that’s an implication of these feasts of Pentecost and booths and the preeminence of the law in the context of those festivities. Jesus died, was raised up, and ascended that the spirit might come and minister that law into our hearts. And for us to turn off the spigot when Sunday’s over and turn it back on Sunday morning, is not a good thing.

The word of God should permeate our families. We should all be reading the scriptures on a regular basis. The only time you hear the scriptures in the Lord’s day worship services, not good. It should permeate our households.

All right. Next, turn to Zechariah 14:16-19. And we have layered in one more aspect of Lord’s Day worship service here. Two more actually. Zechariah 14:16-21. It says in verse 16, Zechariah, it shall come to pass that everyone who was left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles.

So here we have an emphasis of the feast of tabernacles of the nations coming up to worship God.

Verse 18, if the family of Egypt will not come up and enter in, they shall have no rain. They shall receive the plague with which the Lord strikes the nations who do not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles. This shall be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all nations that have not come up to keep the feast of tabernacles.

So tabernacles has traditionally been understood to include a mission emphasis, an emphasis of bringing in all the nations of the world. Now, we talked about that at Pentecost. The spirit is given. The world is typologically saved through all the nations being gathered and the spirit of God coming and converting some from every nation. But the culmination of all things is Matthew 28, the great commission.

The nations will be brought in and all the nations will keep the feast of tabernacles. All those feasts of the Old Testament are combined into the Lord’s day activities. And what it says in every nation, the men will come up to keep Sabbath with God, to keep the Lord’s the Christian Sabbath, the Lord’s day worship service, which has this aspect of the feast of tabernacles. And additionally, this tells us that if you don’t do it, then you’re going to be cursed.

See, it’s important to present yourself before God every Lord’s day and to come into his presence and rejoice with him.

Now, this emphasis upon the nations is also pictured in the sacrifices that go on at the Feast of Tabernacles. Feast of Tabernacles had many more sacrifices than any other feast. On the first day, there were 13 bulls slaughtered or sacrificed. Second day, 12. Third day, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, etc. And if you add up all of those numbers, there are 70 bulls being sacrificed at the Feast of Tabernacles, which most commentators and I believe correlates back to the list of the 70 nations in Genesis.

And so tabernacles was a yearly reminder. There were 70 for the nations and one for the nation of Israel that the priestly nation would indeed eventually see coming up to keep tabernacles all the nations of the world. Tabernacles is a postmillennial celebration. You see, it pictures that both in terms of the number of sacrifices for the 70 nations and in Zechariah explicitly saying that all the nations will come up to the feast of tabernacles. All the nations will keep Lord’s Day activities in the context of that. And so tabernacles is a is a feast of great missionary emphasis to the nations.

Starting today and then again next Sunday, the alms offering here at RCC is dedicated to the Poland mission that we’ll be leaving on Mike and I next a week from this coming Wednesday to help people in various ways in Poland. So please give liberally today and next Lord’s Day to the alms offering. It’ll all be dedicated to Poland and it’s an appropriate Sunday to focus that emphasis on because here when we talk about the tabernacle aspect of our worship service, we’re supposed to be reminded at every Lord’s Day worship service that all the nations in the process of being converted by the giving of God’s word and the coming of Christ through the power of the spirit to the nations.

And so we have this emphasis from Zechariah.

Next text we want to turn to is John 7 verses 2 and then particularly verses 37-39 and we bring this into the New Testament. Now, now verse two tells us that this is the feast of tabernacles. So Jesus goes up during the feast of tabernacles and teaches. So we have this emphasis on the law again, the word of God coming from Christ our savior in chapter 7 of John.

But then he does something that is not necessarily understood why he’s doing this till you know what’s going on at the time. In John 7:37, it says, “On the last day, the great day of the feast.” See, the last day was that great day of rejoicing. It was the culmination of everything. On the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. He who believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

But this he spoke concerning the spirit whom those believing in him would receive. For the Holy Spirit was not yet given because Christ Jesus was not yet glorified.

Now we talked about this last week correlating the coming of the spirit and then the dispersing of the spirit by his disciples on Pentecost. But here Jesus gives this teaching explicitly in the context of tabernacles. Why? Well, as it turned out the Jews had developed a custom had it for quite some time at tabernacles, the drawing of water. And they would go to Siloam and they’d get a golden pitcher and draw out some water and pour it into another pitcher. People would be singing praises and the picture there would be poured upon the altar and the people would take their palm branches that they had there for tabernacles, wave them at the altar and I don’t know why they did it.

But what they did actually we are somewhat informed because they would then sing from Isaiah 12:3, “Therefore with joy shall ye draw water out of the well of salvation.” That’s what they actually were singing as this water ceremony goes on at the last day of the feast. And so our savior says, “I am the water. I am the well of salvation. Draw it out of me.”

But understand people that you don’t draw it out of me for your own sake. Ultimately, you draw that water out of me so that you will disperse it to the nations. Indeed, in Ezekiel’s temple, what happens? The water comes out from that water pitch, so to speak, the altar of the big and the cleansing place and goes to fill the whole world.

So our savior explicitly ties the giving of the spirit both at Pentecost which is when it would happen because of his glorification but he ties that explicitly to the feast of tabernacles as well. Why? Because just like the law is given at Sinai but then read again at tabernacles. The spirit is given on the day of Pentecost because of the resurrection of the savior but that spirit will go out to water all the world and all the nations of the earth will be gathered in through the preaching of the word accompanied by the judgments of God.

That’s what Zechariah said. Right? So the word and God’s providence goes out and all the world is converted through the preaching of the word and the providence of God with judgments upon those who are opposed to him and shade to those who are not. So we have this correlation. It’s the beginning and end of the movement of the gospel ministry of bringing in the nations that’s talked about in these great feasts.

And these are elements of our work. worship service. When we move from the preaching of the word to the word accompanying the sacrament at the back, it’s a reminder of the removal of history that you are filled with the water of God’s spirit and his word to go out into the world that all the nations might join us at the banqueting table as we move from Pentecost to tabernacles. So John chapter 7 correlates the sign.

Now Zechariah by the way stresses holiness as well after it says the nations will come up to keep tabernacles to be to keep the feast of tabernacles at the Lord’s day. It says that everything will be holiness to the Lord. So the implication of tabernacles is we’re all gathered together that all of our lives might be wholly consecrated to King Jesus. And so we have this emphasis from John chapter 7. The Lord’s day has to have a focus on the empowering, recreating, indwelling Holy Spirit that will change the face of the world through the going forth of his people.

Now I want to conclude by spending just a couple of minutes on these booths. What are these booths? Feast of booths. Well, as I said, the problem here is we don’t know if they ever had lean-tos in the wilderness and it seems like the wilderness wouldn’t have provided the leafy material for this. So, what’s the solution to this? Part of the solution is to look for a little bit of the imagery involved. And the first thing that I want to make correlation to is the fact that we are trees before God.

Isaiah 61:3 says that he has come to counsel those who mourn in Zion, to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called the trees of righteousness, the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified. So the feast of tabernacles reminds us that when we get together in Lord’s day service, we’re to think of ourselves as trees. We’re living in trees and we are trees. We’re the planting of the Lord.