Sukkot 2008

	15 October Wednesday	Sukkot service   7:00 PM
	19 October Sunday	Sukkot celebration  11:00 AM Bring your picnic lunch, and join us for music, fun and fellowship at Mt. Lebanon Encampment. Drinks will be furnished.

Sukkot - The Season of Our Rejoicing

The Feast of Tabernacles,
The Final Ingathering of the Harvest

Sukkot, or the Feast of Booths commemorates the 40-year wilderness journey. Sukkot (Soo-kote or SOO-Kote), also known as the Feast of Tabernacles, is a week-long celebration of the fall harvest and a time to build booths (temporary shelters of branches) to remember how the Hebrew people lived under G-d’s care during their forty years in the wilderness (Nehemiah 8:14-17). The celebration is a reminder of G-d’s faithfulness and protection. Jews all over the world continue to celebrate Sukkot by building and dwelling in temporary booths for eight days. The four special plants used to cover the booth are citron, myrtle, palm and willow (Leviticus 39:40). Sukkot is one of the three pilgrim feasts when all Jewish males were required to go to Jerusalem to “appear before the L-RD.” (Deuteronomy 16:16)

Sukkot is a happy feast when people rejoice in G-D’s forgiveness and material blessings.

A Lulav , made of willow, palm, and myrtle branches, along with the etrog (citron), is waived all four directions (north, south, east and west), and up and down to symbolize that G-D’s presence is everywhere.

Two ceremonies were part of the last day of Sukkot:

1. People with torches marched around the Temple, then set these lights around the walls of the temple, indicating that Messiah would be a light to the Gentiles. (Isaiah 49: 6)
2. A priest carried water from the pool of Siloam to the Temple, symbolizing that when Messiah comes the whole earth will know G-D “as water covers the sea.” (Isaiah 11:9)

When Yeshua attended the Feast of Tabernacles on the last day of the feast, He said, “If  anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, streams of living water will flow from within him.”  ( John 7:37, 38)
The next morning as the torches were still burning, He said, “I am the light of the world.”  (John 8:12)

Sukkot represents the final harvest when all the nations will share in the joy and blessings of G-D’s Kingdom.  During that time, all believers will celebrate this feast.

“Finally, anyone  remaining from the nations that came up to attack Jerusalem will go up every year to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, and to keep the festival of  Sukkot.  If any of the families of the earth does not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, The Lord of Hosts,  no rain will fall on them.” Zechariah 14: 16-17

During this time of  rejoicing, let us remember that the L-rd is King , the L-rd was King, and that the L-rd will be King forever.  Let us celebrate His goodness, as we look forward to the bountiful table He will lay out before us at the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.