The Feast of Tabernacles-life a tented state.
This was the third great festival, and it was after all the harvest and vintage had been gathered home. It was celebrated in the seventh month, from the fifteenth day to the twenty-second. It is also noticeable that it began five days after the great Day of Atonement, which was on the tenth day of this same seventh month. Sin pardoned, and the harvest saved, these were surely twin blessings at which poor sinners might well rejoice.
I. THE FESTIVAL WAS TO REMIND THE ISRAELITES OF THE PILGRIMAGE IN THE WILDERNESS. Their settling in Canaan was not to blot out the memory of their previous pilgrimage, and how they dwelt with God in tents. The same danger threatens God's children still. This world gets so settled and home-like that we forget the pilgrimage which life is meant by God to be. We need the exhortation of Peter, "Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul" (1 Peter 2:11).
II. THE FESTIVAL WAS TO BE A JOYOUS ONE. It would be joyous on three accounts:
Hence the festival would be virtually a tenting out in the pleasantest time of the year, with minds delivered from all anxiety and fear.
And this is to indicate the high-water mark of Christian experience. We are living below our privileges if we are not rejoicing in God's providential goodness, and in his atoning grace, and in his beautiful world. "Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice" (Philippians 4:4).
III. THE FESTIVAL FOSTERED HOPE. For if life as it now is should be regarded as a pilgrimage, an unsettled state, then each time we are reminded of this we learn to look for a better condition and more permanent abode. If I am reminded that I dwell in a tent of flesh, easily taken down, I learn to hope for the building of God, the "house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens' (2 Corinthians 5:1).
"A while on earth we roam
In these frail houses which are not our home,
Journeying towards a refuge that is sure,—
A rest secure.
"For in our Father's house
A mansion fair he has prepared for us;
And only till his voice shall call us hence
We dwell in tents."
IV. THE FESTIVAL FOSTERED FORETHOUGHT AND THRIFT. It had all the wholesome effect on them which an annual picnic has upon working people. They look forward to it and make preparation for it. Now, these festivals at the center of the national worship were to be joyful and liberal times. They were not to appear empty-handed before the Lord. They were to be able to give at his altar and be hospitable as they had opportunity. Hence the festival cultivated thrifty habits in order to be openhanded when the glad day came. So should religion make us all!—R.M.E.