Deuteronomy 16:13-17--The Feast of Booths

Deuteronomy 16:13-17
English Standard Version

The Feast of Booths
13 “You shall keep the Feast of Booths seven days, when you have gathered in the produce from your threshing floor and your winepress. 14 You shall rejoice in your feast, you and your son and your daughter, your male servant and your female servant, the Levite, the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow who are within your towns. 15 For seven days you shall keep the feast to the LORD your God at the place that the LORD will choose, because the LORD your God will bless you in all your produce and in all the work of your hands, so that you will be altogether joyful.

​16 “Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the Feast of Unleavened Bread, at the Feast of Weeks, and at the Feast of Booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed. 17 Every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.

---

This is the third of the three Pilgrimage Feasts for the nation of Israel, when all of Israel are required to gather together for holy convocation.  The first was Passover the reminds them of their redemption from their time of slavery and the sacrifice that had to be made for them to save their lives--a blood sacrifice had to be made to pay the price of the life that was owed (Jesus is our Passover Lamb and the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world).

The second pilgrimage feast is the Feast of Weeks or the Feast of Pentecost.  We talked about that one last time and we see the fulfillment of this feast in Acts with the coming of the Holy Spirit to all the Jewish people from all the nations that gathered together that day.  We'll talk a bit more about this day when we study the book of Acts in the near future.

The third of the pilgrimage feasts is the Feast of Booths, or the Feast of Tabernacles.  While Pentecost was a feast of the harvest of the grain, the Feast of Booths was a celebration of the harvest of grapes in the Fall (usually in September).  This is also a time for them to remember the time that the LORD protected them in the wilderness for forty years when they lived in tents and did not yet have a land-they were aliens and sojourners that knew they were on the way to their Promised Land, but they had not arrived there yet.  That is much like our walk with the LORD today.  We are somewhere between our Exodus out of slavery to sin and we've proverbially crossed the Red Sea but we have yet to proverbially crossed the Jordan River into the Promised Land of heaven.  That analogy falls apart a bit as there will be no more enemies for us to fight when we enter our Promised Land of the New Heavens and the New Earth, but this is something we too celebrate as something we look forward to and as we also remember how "The WORD became flesh and tabernacled among us."

Everyone--young, old, rich, poor, Levite, common person, and even the fatherless and the widows, and the homeless--they were all to celebrate the good things that they had during this time and that they lived in the Land that the LORD had provided for them.

Every time that the people came before the LORD at the Tabernacle or Temple for one of these pilgrimage feasts, they were to come ready to give their required sacrifices and ready to give not just their tithes but their offerings--as much as they were able--to help take care of the needs of the Levites and the destitute that the Levites helped to take care of.  These were the holy days, what we call holidays, for the people.  Imagine if we had holidays where we gathered together as an entire nation together in one place to thank the LORD and to offer up sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving for who He is and what He has done.  Wouldn't that be quite a statement to all the people that live among us and all the other nations that would see that we fear and worship the LORD with gladness?  Yet we do not have a physical Tabernacle or Temple to gather at any more because Christ is the fulfillment of the Tabernacle and Temple and He has called us to be the Temple or Tabernacle of the Holy Spirit.  We are to be the place where people can gather together to celebrate these things because the Holy Spirit is with us wherever we go.

We too are thankful for our Exodus and Passover that was provided to us.  We are thankful for our daily bread, but also for the harvest of souls and we pray to the Lord of the Harvest to send workers out into the harvest, for the harvest is plentiful, but the the laborers are few.  We even celebrate the coming harvest of grapes which is portrayed as the coming wrath of God that will be poured out on all those who are unbelievers, but for those who are gathered together with Christ, we need not fear this harvest and it is a time we will be able to celebrate that the Lord is holy and just and He will not let the wicked go unpunished.  We too look forward to our permanent home with Jesus as we feel like we too are wandering through the wilderness of life right now and we feel like foreigners and aliens, but we are more than that--we are His ambassadors.  Ambassadors of the King and His Kingdom.  Let us proclaim the gospel to others in how we gather together to celebrate our holidays--if not specifically celebrating these holidays (which I see no problem with) then the holidays that are closes to these in our nation.  Holidays were not originally meant to celebrate and worship people, but to celebrate and worship the God we serve--worship who He is and what He has done and use it as a way to share the gospel with the others you gather together with and those who ask you why you celebrate as many of these days are coming into question now.