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While
most of the Christian world is celebrating Christmas,
looking back on the Incarnation of the Son of
God, I think that the Eternal already provided
this concept in a God-ordained holiday called
"Sukkot." Sukkot (Booths or Tabernacles) is the
seventh major Biblical holiday, and falls in the
seventh month, in both ways symbolizing fulfillment.
It begins on the fifteenth day of the month, when
the moon is full. At Sukkot, for the third and
final time of the year, all Jewish men were required
to go up to Jerusalem, to celebrate the fullness
of the harvest, giving thanks to the God of Israel
for providing us with land on which to grow things,
seeds to plant, the sun to shine on them, rain
to water them and strength to harvest them. We
build booths and decorate them with branches,
flowers and the fruit of the harvest, and live
in them for eight days. We take willow, palm and
myrtle branches and wave them, rejoicing in the
goodness of God.
These
temporary booths, which go up one week and come
down the next, remind us of the Exodus from Egypt
and the forty years of wandering in the wilderness.
They remind us that life in this world is temporary;
that here on Earth we have no permanent home.
But Sukkot also helps us look forward to a greater
Exodus, an Exodus from the ages of sorrow and
pain, suffering, sin and death, and the coming
of the golden age - the Millennial Kingdom, when
King Messiah returns to Earth, to Jerusalem His
special city, gathering into God's kingdom the
redeemed of all the nations. Just as we gather
in the harvest and journey to Jerusalem, so at
the end of this age God will gather the fruit
of humanity into His Millennial Kingdom, and we
will begin to celebrate with Him forever and ever.
Sukkot
teaches us that the God of Israel is the kind
of God who wants to build His Sukkah in our midst.
He desires to dwell among us, and make His home
among us. He is not the kind of God who holds
Himself aloof from those He has created. "Am
I a God who is near," declares the Lord, "and
not a God far off? Can a man hide himself in hiding
places, so I do not see him?" declares the Lord.
"Do I not fill the heavens and the Earth?" declares
the Lord (Jeremiah 23:23-24). All other beings,
including men and angels, are restricted to being
in one place at one time. When they are "here"
they can't be "there." But there is no place where
the Creator of the universe could not be - He
fills the universe. He is completely present throughout
the entire universe, with its billions of galaxies
and their trillions of stars. He is at all times
wholly present everywhere, as fully as if He were
nowhere else.
Of course,
it makes sense that the infinite, all-powerful,
all-present Creator must be everywhere, for the
Creator must be greater than His creation. "Will
God indeed dwell on the Earth?" King Solomon
prayed on Sukkot 3,000 years ago, at the dedication
of the first Temple. Solomon went on praying,
"Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot
contain You, how much less this house which I
have built!" Solomon's father, King David,
also knew that the God of Israel is present everywhere.
"Where can I go from Your Spirit?" David
prayed, "Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make
my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take
the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest
part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead
me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me. If
I say, 'Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
and the light around me will be night,' even the
darkness is not dark to You, and the night is
as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike
to You."
"We
should also understand that, although God is present
in every part of His creation, this does not mean
that He is present in the same way everywhere,
and in all His creatures. His indwelling presence
is in harmony with the nature of His creatures.
He does not dwell on Earth as He does in heaven,
nor in animals as He does in man, nor in the inorganic
as He does in the organic, nor in the wicked as
He does in the righteous. He does not dwell outside
the Temple as He does within. He does not dwell
in Messiah's Holy Community of Jews and Gentiles
as He does in Messiah Himself. There is an endless
variety in the manner in which the living God
is present in His creation and in His creatures"
(Systematic Theology, Louis Berkhof, Eerdmans,
Grand Rapids, 1939, page 61).
The Creator
is indeed present everywhere, but He desires to
draw nearer to us, and for us to draw nearer to
Him. That's why He created us in His own image,
with mind, intelligence, will, emotion, and the
ability to think, reason, speak and listen, so
that we might be His friends, and He ours! He
is working in us to make us fit companions for
Himself, that we may enjoy one another throughout
eternity. Therefore it is not surprising that
the very first thing the Torah reveals is God
creating the universe, subsequently this wondrous
planet, and finally a very special place - the
Garden of Eden, specifically designed to be a
home for man. In that special garden, God befriended
man. He visited Adam and Eve, walking with them
in the cool of the day. Even after our first
parents alienated themselves from God, He still
desired to dwell among us. After the Fall,
though we were alienated from Him and our friendship
was in tatters, God maintained a "beachhead" on
Earth for His presence to continue to dwell. That's
why He created His Chosen People. He promised
the Jewish people: "I will make My dwelling
among you, and My soul will not reject you. I
will also walk among you and be your God, and
you will be My people" (Leviticus 26:11-12).
That's
also the reason why God instructed us to build
the Mishkan (the Tent of God's Dwelling Presence).
While the Mishkan was still under construction,
God said: "I will dwell among the sons of Israel
and be their God. I am the Lord their God that
brought them out of the land of Egypt that
I might dwell among them." That was also
why He commanded us to build the Temple in Jerusalem.
There, in the midst of a holy people, served by
a holy priesthood, in a holy land, in the center
of the holy city, there was a holy house. Within
it was a holy place, and a most holy place, where
the Shechinah, the glorious dwelling presence
of God, was manifested on Earth. The Jerusalem
Temple enabled the Creator to maintain that beachhead
on this sinful world, that He might continue to
dwell among us.
However,
even the Jerusalem Temple was only a beachhead,
and access to the dwelling presence of God was
severely restricted. Of all of mankind, only
the High Priest of Israel could enter into the
Most Holy Place, and that only once a year, and
only after making elaborate preparations, including
bringing the blood of a sacrifice with him. Even
then, it was necessary that clouds of incense
cover the Ark, so that the High Priest would not
gaze at the dwelling presence of God. The way
into God's presence was not available to 99.9999%
of human beings.
Even though
God told Solomon that the Temple was where He
would "dwell among the sons of Israel, and
will not forsake My people Israel" nevertheless,
because of the wickedness of the Jewish people,
God allowed the Babylonians to destroy the Temple
in 586 BC. The Jewish people who returned from
Babylon rebuilt the Temple seventy years later.
But there was no Ark, and the Shechinah, the glorious
dwelling presence of God, was not manifested in
quite the same way as in the First Temple.
About
520 years later, God manifested His presence once
more, and in the supreme way, on Earth. The Son
of God, who lived with the Father from eternity,
came to Earth. He became incarnate, which means
He took on a body, became flesh, and dwelt among
us. In this way, He figuratively built His Sukkah
and tabernacled among us. In doing so, He embodied
of the dwelling presence of God on Earth. He was
the true Temple of God, the place where God dwells.
In Him the fullness of God dwelt in bodily form.
"Destroy
this Temple," He told a group of Jewish leaders,
"and in three days I will raise it up..."
speaking, of course, of the Temple of His body.
The whole history of God walking in the Garden
of Eden, the Tent of God's Dwelling Presence,
and the Temple, is the history of a home for God
in the world, a dwelling place for God among men.
The coming of the One who is rightly called Immanuel
- God with us, is the fullness of God's desire
to be with us, and dwell among us.
And when
Yeshua died, the veil, which had once blocked
the way to the Most Holy Place in the Jerusalem
Temple, was divinely torn from top to bottom.
Because of Messiah's death, the dwelling presence
of God for the first time became available to
all mankind. All one needs to do is put his trust
in Messiah and he is invited to boldly come before
God's throne of grace and find help in his time
of need. Fifty days after He died, the risen Messiah
poured out His Spirit into those first Jewish
disciples, and we became the Temple of God,
the dwelling place of God on Earth. "Do
you not know that you are a Temple of God, and
that the Spirit of God dwells in you?" Messianic
Jews and Christians are being built together into
a dwelling of God's Spirit. Today God is still
dwelling on Earth, but now it is in Messiah's
Holy Community of Jews and Gentiles. We are God's
beachhead in this world. The Creator is still
at work reconciling the world to Himself, so that
He can live with man, and man can live with Him.
That is our mission, to bring man and God back
together in friendship.
When Messiah
comes again, He will continue to be the fullness
of the dwelling presence of God among men. There,
in Zion, the nations will be gathered to His great
Sukkah. He will rebuild the Temple, and on Sukkot,
not only the Jewish people, but also all the nations
will go up to Jerusalem to worship the God of
Israel in spirit and in truth. What will happen
after that? The book of Revelation describes the
New Jerusalem, the eternal dwelling place of God
and man. There won't be any Temple there, for
the Lord God the Almighty, and the sacrificed
Messiah, are its Temple! No Temple; no house,
no veil, no priests, no barriers of any kind to
keep God and man apart. Absolutely nothing will
hinder us from enjoying complete access to God,
nor from enjoying living in his presence. God,
Messiah, mankind, Jews and Gentiles, all of us,
living together, forever. Sukkot reminds us that
our lives here on Earth are temporary. It reminds
us both of the harvest and of the greater "harvest
of humanity." It reminds us of our Exodus out
of Egypt, and our greater Exodus from sin through
the Messiah. It reminds us of God's desire to
reconcile us to Himself, to save us, so that He
might once again live with us, and we with Him.
And it reminds us of the eternal dwelling places
that Messiah has gone on ahead to prepare for
each one of us.
In view
of all this, what should our response be? Though
we live in this physical universe of matter, space
and time, ultimately we live in the presence of
God. We live in the physical universe, but this
universe itself exists in God. Moses understood
this when he declared: "Lord, You have been
our dwelling place in all generations. Before
the mountains were born, or You gave birth to
the Earth and the world, even from everlasting
to everlasting, You are God." Rabbi Paul told
us that in God "we live, and move and have
our being." Since He is our dwelling place,
let's be good neighbors with Him. Let's make sure
that He feels at home in us. How do we do that?
Yeshua promised: "If anyone loves Me, he will
keep My word; and My Father will love him, and
We will come to Him, and make our home with
him" (John 14:23). Even though Yeshua
uttered that promise 2,000 years ago, we know
that no matter what the new Millennium holds,
God will still be the same indwelling God. So
love Him, and show it by keeping Yeshua's word.
Cultivate a friendship with God. Don't do things
that will grieve Him. Do those things which please
Him. Make Him feel welcome. Draw near to Him,
and let Him richly dwell in you, and you will
have the most blessed and fruitful kind of life.
That's what Sukkot and the Incarnation are all
about.
Rabbi
Loren
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