Summary 

Life is full of uncertainty, but the ancient Jewish celebration of the Feast of Booths offers a surprisingly relevant framework for finding peace in the middle of it. Rooted in Leviticus 23 and echoed in Psalm 81, this celebration called God's people to confess what He had done, confront their tendency to stop listening, and respond with genuine worship. The psalm moves through three movements: a confession of God's saving acts, a concern about why His people refuse to truly listen, and a call to come and worship together. Worship is not a denial of hardship but a declaration of faith that God is present and providing, even in the wilderness. The Feast of Booths was celebrated in temporary shelters, open to the elements, and yet the command was still to rejoice. Whatever uncertain season you find yourself in, the invitation remains the same: come to the feast, remember what God has done, and celebrate even here.

Transcript

Lord, thank you for your word. God, thank you for times when we are reminded of your great acts, your great salvation, bringing us from slavery to freedom, from death to life. Thank you, Lord, for the gathering of your people, where we recount the cross and the resurrection, where we look to your word or that we might have direction in this life and how we confess, how often we don't. We live wayward lives, wandering from you in the wilderness. And so, God, I pray today that as we sit with your word, you'd speak to us again, that our hearts would be moved and our lives would be directed by you, and that we would respond in worship to you.
Lord, do all these things. God, we pray in your name for our good, for your glory. Amen. All right. Like most of life, moving is filled with uncertainty.
Y' all have done this. I'm sure it's filled with sort of unease. And it's not just because it's a mess, though. It is, right? Stuff everywhere.
Stuff you're like, what is this stuff? Stuff that you're like, should we keep that stuff? It's just stuff everywhere. And you're wondering, of course, if your life is going to have a semblance of order ever again.
Wondering if you will get along with your neighbors, wondering who they will be, if they will like you or your children or your dogs. These are thoughts that are going on through my mind. Of course I've shared with you. I know at least years ago, I shared with you some of the stories of growing up. I'm not going to go into these stories right now, but we had a neighbor growing up who was schizophrenic, and her visions only were sort of oriented towards our family.
And so the police knew us well by name. Those are stories for another sermon. But you can imagine, moving brings up uncertainty, of course. And many of you know that over the past week or so, we have been in the process of moving. We are actually just moving about two blocks from the house that we first lived in up in uptown near Italian Lake.
Some of you were in that a while back.
Some of you have lent a hand. And I just want to say thank you. That's very kind of you. But it's been a bittersweet thing, us moving in, because, of course, we brought Henry home to this house that we have we're moving from. And we've had many dinners with many of you and sweet memories.
But moving is filled with this uncertainty, and largely, it's filled with uncertainty about who will be around us. So we've had Some opportunity to get to know some of our neighbors a little bit, even this week. And the couple, just the house north of our house are this older, devout Jewish couple. And so Marian, the wife, she actually brought us over a loaf of challah bread. Challah.
Challah. You know that bread, it is sweet. It's delicious. And they have it every Sabbath day. So Friday night and into Saturday, they said there's like two to four loaves between the two of them, which is awesome.
They've lived in that house for about 40 years. They actually got it from the son of the man who originally built it, who developed the whole neighborhood. And we heard that story. Melissa and I yesterday, walked a little bit on our. While we were walking the dog, we talked with Bert, the husband.
And here's the thing, both of the conversations, how they're going to be celebrating Sukkot, Sukkah. And what they will do is they'll take branches, leaves, and they're going to build this little play for it like we do. And of course, the top will be shaded, but you'll allow the rain still to come in. And one of the things that they're going to do is they invite neighbors over to come have coffee in the little fort, or they have their meals in there. And they said it's a great time and you can come over and sit and chat with us.
So that sounds great. Of course, some of you know that Sukkot is actually also known as the Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths. The Feast of Booths is the celebration of God's provision to his people from their wandering in the wilderness. How he cared for them, how he provided for them, how he brought them out in safety.
But then also while they were wandering, they were living in booths and God was providing for them. And how they actually continued that celebration once they went into the Promised Land. And it was actually the celebration that happens in the fall. Our text mentions that it's the first month the trumpet is blown. And that would have been blown to remind people we need to celebrate what God's done.
He's brought us into this new year and he's provided for us. And we have this harvest, this long sort of declaration year in, year out, that in the uncertainty and the mess of life, God's provision is good and kind to his people. So it's living into this story of what God has done. It's also reminding us through His Word, the reading of His Word and the study of it, of what he's done and of his care. It's sort of a pausing in the just busy hectic range reality of life, to confess God, to remind one another of who he is, what he's done.
It's a willingness, in the craziness, to invite others in and to tell them the stories. So the first time that the feast of booth is mentioned is in Leviticus 23. You all no doubt know that Leviticus 23 is the great chapter about how the people of God organize their time. Remember that Moses lays out sort of a weekly remembrance, but also a yearly remembrance, a calendar. So the beginning of that chapter begins with the Sabbath, a weekly remembrance of the God of creation and the God of salvation.
But at the end of that chapter, there's the section on the Feast of Booths. And so I'm going to read a little bit of it for you, okay? Verse 39 of Leviticus 23. On the 15th day of the seventh month, when you've gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord. Seven days on the first day shall be a solemn rest.
And on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God. Seven days. You shall celebrate it as a feast of the Lord for seven days in the year. It's a statute forever through your generations.
You shall celebrate it in the seventh month, shall dwell in booths. For seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths. That your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
So this is a feast of remembrance, A feast remembering the provision of God in the uncertainty of the wilderness, but also kind of a continual remembrance that God is with us in the uncertainty and the crazy and the busy and the wildness of life. You know, they were asking the question, no doubt. Will he be with us in those times? Is he still present? Will he still provide?
Will God finish what he started when he brought us out from slavery? Will he bring us to the promised Land? That's a Christian question, too, right?
Yearly, just Will the harvest come in? Will we have what we need in this life? Will we be able to eat? Can we sit together, linger over a meal, dwell in one another's presence, welcome neighbors in through the upheavals of life? And another question is, will we sing?
Will we hear the trumpet blast that the new season is here? God's promises are secure. Will we celebrate? So why I'm going into all this is because Psalm 81 most believe is the psalm of Sukkot, of the Feast of Booths. And there's a number of reasons to think this.
Most specifically, it says, blow the trumpet, which is the shofar, that horn, blow it at the new moon, at the full moon on our feast day. And that would have been the beginning of this season. So this is a psalm that is happening right around. Very likely, it's the one that would have been sung, studied, prayed for right around the Feast of Booths. So there's a number of reasons for this, but what I want us to see this morning is that this psalm presents us in some ways with the same lesson of the Feast of Booths.
It's sort of the same question of what do we do with the uncertainty? Will we. Do we know the story of God? What do we confess? That's part of it, the act of confession.
But it also presents us with a concern, which is you actually believe the confession. And then it also presents us with a call. If you believe the confession, if you kind of press through the concern, what is the outcome? The call. Okay, so first, the confession.
That's going to be in the middle of this psalm.
And I want to just say this confession addresses the uncertainty of life with the story of God's salvation and also the declaration from His Word. Okay, so if you have your Bible open, look down with me at verse six and seven. Okay? I relieved your shoulders of the burden. Your hands were freed from the basket.
In distress. You called and I delivered you. I answered you in the secret place of thunder. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. So first I want you to see how this psalm, in the event of the feast of Booths, was the occasion for this singing.
That's the occasion for it, right? That's when they're doing it. But it's a confession of what has God done? What has he done? What is the story of God's salvation?
Well, maybe you saw this. I relieved your shoulders of the burden. Shoulder burden. Your hands freed from the basket. I mean, all that.
Shoulder burden, hands, basket, all that is the picture of what was happening under slavery. Heavy laden. The hands were worn, they were burdened. They were carrying around those things which didn't belong to them. They were slaves.
They had to remember. They had to confess where they had come from. Okay, So I thought I'd. I think this is a good time to say this because I think it makes some sense of the passage. One of the things we do every week in this service is we confess our sins, right?
That's one of these things. And sometimes people are like, why do you keep doing that? You know, why do we do these same things every week? And I have a number of answers for that. One of the answers is that sin is always distancing us.
Sin always distances. We know this in our human relationships. We harm somebody and you're like, I, I don't feel like we can be very close or you can't be very close, at least until you name it, right? And you own it and you confess it and you receive forgiveness and there's a reconciliation. That's how life works.
And that's how life works with God too. We come into the presence of a holy God and we say, lord, we're not worthy because we've erred and strayed from your ways. Like last sheep we've ran away from you, so forgive us so that we can be bound together again. But part of what we're also doing is we're remembering where we were without God. Burdened, heavy laden shoulders heavy hands worn thin.
We're saying, outside of you we are just slaves unless you act. And before you act, before you acted for us, this is how we wander. There's just something good in reminding ourselves, what are we without God? Where were we without God? So confession is a confession of the story of God's redemptive acts, his great act of bringing people out from slavery to himself, God's deliverance of his people.
He says, Verse 7. In distress you called and I delivered you.
And it goes down. I am the Lord your God in verse 10, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the mount. Open your mouth wide, I will fill it. So this confession that's taking place is a recounting of God's great salvific acts, his act of salvation, which is to say that in the midst of the confusion of life, they're to remember God can do that. He hears your cry, he delivers you, he brings you out from that.
And he says, open up your mouth wide, I'm going to fill it, I'm going to care for you.
An interesting thing, of course, is that they come out of Egypt and they come into the wilderness, wandering time. And then it talks about how God tests them at the waters of Meribah. Right, verse seven, the last part. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Meribah was the place of God's providing water for his people in the wilderness.
But it's also a place of testing. Another thing is mentioned there. It says the secret place of thunder. Most everyone believes that that's the place of Sinai, where the cloud comes and the loud sounds of thunder as Moses is up on the mountain. But anyway, so this is recounting in some ways, this salvation story of God, but also actually what would have happened at the Feast of Booths is not just recounting the story of what God has done, but also recounting his word, his law.
You could say Meribah his Acts and Sinai his words. How were they to live? Would they continue as they did in Egypt? Were the 400 years of the Egyptian habits that they had sort of formed? Were they going to define their lives, or were they going to live according to God's words to them?
So they'd gather together in these booths, as they still do today, as we still do in a way, each Sunday, and they would recount the great words, works of God, and they would remember his words to them.
Our Old Testament story or reading this morning that Rebecca read for us was Deuteronomy 31. And I wonder if you heard that, because it's. All the people are gathered together, and even says the little ones, everybody needs to gather together. And it's done. So on the feast of booze, and the law of God is brought out, and all.
All of it's red. Sometimes you guys think maybe the scripture readings are too long in this church. Saul, Everybody is listening. That's part of what's happening at the Feast of Booths. And of course, we kind of have a glimpse of that happening here in this verse or in this part passage, too.
In this chapter, verses 4, says talks about the statutes and the rules of God. Verse 5 talks about the decrees of God.
And then actually, if you go down, there's actually sort of an echo, if you will, of the Ten Commandments, sort of saying, here the law of God is put forward.
Verses 8 and 9 and 10. Hear, O my people, while I admonish you. O Israel, if you would but listen to me. There shall be no strange gods among you. You shall not bow down to a foreign God.
Doesn't that sound like the Ten Commandments? Verse 10. I am Lord your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Again, like the preface to the Ten Commandments, which is to say that this is not just the recounting of what God has done in his acts of salvation, but this is also a declaration that we need the words of God to our lives. We need direction from God's words.
So in some ways, there's some obvious questions for us. What do you do in uncertainty? Where do you go when mess feels too great, when the burden feels like it's too much? What do we do in our wilderness experiences? What do we do when we're reminded again that we are not in the Promised Land yet?
What do you do when you're wondering about your children's health or will you get a job that you need? So.
Sometimes it's hard, right? Sometimes it's hard. Life can be challenging, incredibly uncertain. And part of what this text is saying is be reminded that the Lord is strong, that he can take you out from slavery, he can bring you to Himself, that He gives you his words for direction in your life. Tell the story of God, recount His deeds, listen to his words for direction, and think about this.
This happened for a week straight.
I mean, that sounds hard to do, doesn't it? Like, we have a hard time sometimes just making weekly worship a habit, though it was our Lord's habit. And they're saying a whole week, gather together and do this. Even that feels like such an uncertain thing. How would you plan for that?
How would you prepare for that? How would you do food for that? A lot of people are traveling to Jerusalem, like Jesus did in John 7 for that. That sounds like such a mess, such a crazy time.
But God's saying, do this because this will settle you in the midst of uncertainty. Some of you are familiar, hopefully, with Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. He was the chief Rabbi over the uk. He passed away a little while ago. He was also a member of the House of Lords.
He wrote this. If I were to summarize the message of Sukhod, I'd say it's a tutorial in how to live with insecurity and still celebrate life. How do you live with the uncertainty that our life presents us with time and again and still celebrate life? He continues on. Life can be full of risk and yet still a blessing.
Faith doesn't mean living with certainty. Faith is the courage to live with uncertainty, knowing that God is with us on that tough but necessary journey to a world that honors life and treasures peace. How do we do this? How do we live faithfully in uncertainty? Well, I think part of what this text is telling us is that we recount collectively the great acts of God's salvation and we give ourselves to his word for our direction.
So that's kind of the first thing is I think there's a confession here that this is what we need and this is what God has given us. He's given us salvation. He's given us his word. But there's also a big concern in this psalm. There's a big concern because as much as it is an invitation to this midst of uncertainty and this invitation of this confession, this is a psalm with a deep concern.
Did you notice this was brought up in our staff meeting this week when we looked at. Did you notice how dramatically different the beginning of this psalm is? In the end, it kind of starts really high and then it goes pretty low. And it does that because the concern is, will you listen?
Will you listen? Because so often people of God actually just don't listen. We'd rather hear other voices. We'd rather listen to our stomach and our sort of carnal urges. We'd rather listen to our neighbors, what they're saying.
Think about this. I think actually some of these are mentioned here in this text. It mentions Meribah here. And there's two events of Meribah in the wilderness wanderings. There's one at the beginning and there's one at the end.
And most people think they're different places, they have different names. The first One is Exodus 17. Exodus 17. The people are quarreling with Moses. Remember, just two chapters earlier, they're letting Miriam, the sister of Moses, lead them in singing.
Two chapters later, they're saying, oh, I wish we were in Egypt. Again, they're quarreling. They're testing the Lord. They say, why do you bring us to this place only to kill us? And it's actually because of this quarreling and because of this testing of the Lord, that that Meribah is called Meriba Massah, which means literally, coral testing.
So this mentions Meribah, and you're supposed to go, oh, so you can actually know the story of salvation. You can receive God's word and you can just coral and say, lord, I don't really believe it. I don't believe you're going to care for me in the midst of all of this uncertainty of the wilderness. The second Meribah can be found in numbers 20. And there again, we kind of have the same thing.
A little detail that's kind of interesting, though, because there they're saying, you're going to let our cattle die out here in the wilderness, which say their uncertainty wasn't just about their own welfare, but their stuff. I've got all this uncertainty around my stuff. Lord, are you going to care for us? Does God care? Of course.
My guess is that all of us know that question. Do you care for us? In the wilderness. And if you know those stories, they're both really interesting stories because they're both stories of judgment and stories of grace. The second one, Moses and Aaron are, you know, Moses isn't allowed to go into the promised land because he strikes the rock with his staff.
You know that story? The people of God are judged. At the first one. There's judgment, but there's also grace, because God does provide for them.
Which is to say, all of this mention of Meribah here in this passage is to say that Meribah is a place of uncertainty, where their stomachs wanted to be satisfied. And so they quarreled, not believing that God would actually care for them in the midst of that uncertainty. So they test God. What about the place of thunder that's mentioned here? I said that that was Sinai.
Think about this. This is the time when they. When they're not just listening to their stomachs instead of trusting the Lord, they're listening to their neighbors. And so they're waiting on Moses to come down from the place of thunder, right? The mountain Sinai.
And they're like, this is taking too long, Aaron, why don't you listen to us and make a God out of gold, right? They're saying, I don't think this. God's going to provide for us. His timing is not what we desire, what we thought it would be. And so let's listen to each other and make a different plan.
And they reject God. They reject his worship. They reject his timing.
Of course, there's all kinds of times when we think we know better than God. If you only would do this at this time. There's times where we think, oh, man, we had it so much better back then.
But the concern of this passage is, is not that they don't just know the story and they haven't received God's word, but that they really aren't listening. Instead, they're listening to their bodies, or they listen to their neighbors, or they're listening to that which is not the lord. So verse 11. But my people did not listen to my voice. Verse 13.
Oh, that my people would listen to me.
Verse 8 Again, hear, O my people, while I admonish you, O Israel, if you would but listen to me.
So here's the concern. They won't listen. I mean, it's this act of gathering together, of recounting the deeds of God, of hearing His Word. But they're just going through the motion.
Here. I mean, they know this stuff. They're not really listening.
And how common is that for us? I Mean, how common is that in the life of the church? Yeah, I know that. I know that story. I've heard that story so many times.
One thing again that was mentioned this week in our staff meeting is how often the Bible tells the same story of salvation again, how I brought you out from slavery to myself.
They're hard at hearing, and they're hard at hearing because they lack faith, because listening is an act of faith. Listening is an act of saying, I might not know it all. I might need someone outside of me to direct me, to teach me, to train me, to not listen, is to say, I know best, I can do it. They wouldn't listen to God here. Okay, this is one of the meditation quotes inside of your bulletin.
But here, this quote from Henry Nouwen from his book Bread for the Journey. To listen is very hard because it asks of us so much interior stability that we no longer need to prove ourselves by speeches, arguments, statements, declarations. True listeners no longer have an inner need to make their presence known. They're free to receive, to welcome, to accept. Listening is much more than allowing another to talk while waiting for a chance to respond.
I have done that plenty of times, as I'm sure you have.
Listening is paying full attention to others and welcoming them into our very being. The beauty of listening is that those who are listened to start feeling accepted, start taking their words more seriously, and discover their own true selves. Listening is a form of spiritual hospitality by which you invite strangers to become friends, to get to know their inner selves more fully, and even to dare to be silent with you. And this past saying that the Lord himself is saying, would you listen to me?
Would you listen as an act of faith, not having to be defensive, what are all those other things? Not having to think through your own arguments or your statements, your own declarations, but listen to me. So there's this confession, right, about what God's done, these great acts of salvation. There's this confession about his Word and how we need direction from it. And then there's this concern because people are like, we don't really want to listen.
That's the pattern. We don't really care to listen.
Now, the psalm begins with a call, so we're going to end at the beginning, okay?
So sing aloud to God, our strength. Shout for joy to the God of Jacob. So let me get back to Sukkot, Feast of booths.
One practice of observant Jews is to take three different branches, often to bind them together and then to take a fruit. Normally, it's a Citron, like a large sweet lemon. When you go into the booth to celebrate it, it's part of celebrating the Feast of Booths. And actually, if you heard this is mentioned really specifically in Leviticus 23, I read it earlier, but it said this in verse 40, and you shall take on the first day of the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook. So there's like three different branches, there's specific ones, and then a fruit, okay?
And the names that Jews give these things are the Lulav, the Hadas, the Aravah, and the Etrog.
So here's something that I read that was really interesting, is that all of these different species are. There's no one place in Israel where all of these species can be found. The Etrog comes from the plains, the Lulav near the springs, in the valley, Hadass in the mountains, the Arava and near the wadis and the major rivers. So to worship this would mean that all of God's people from all of these different corners had to come together. They had to come together to feast, to celebrate, to sing.
And when they came, when they came together, they were making a collective. Here's one thing I read, because there's different thoughts about what's going on with these branches. I mean, there's different thoughts historically in terms of commentaries, and also even just different thoughts now that I found. But this is one thing I found. The Lulav has taste but no smell.
So you can study the word meaning, you can kind of know it a little bit, but you don't live it right at all.
The harass has some smell but no taste, which is to say you live part of it, but you don't really know it. The Hadass has no smell and no taste. And so you can not know it and not live it just like it, just reject all of it completely. And then the Etroch, which is the fruit, has both taste and smell. And there's an invitation in all this, right?
In that symbolism, there's this invitation. What are you going to be? Are you going to know it and live it? Are you going to know the story of salvation and delight in the direction of God's word? Are you going to hold them together as something lovely and taste?
And this is how this psalm begins. Let me read verse one again. Sing aloud to God our strength. Shout for joy to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp, blow the trumpet at the new moon.
At the full moon on our feast day, which is to say that this confession and this concern, sort of the answer in a way, to whether or not you've. You've really heard is, do you worship?
Do you desire to sing? Are any of you wondering, and the answer is yes. Are there more tambourines up here to shake? Yeah, I actually mean that, because what do we do when our team wins the game?
We don't sit still. We celebrate.
And if you know God's great acts of salvation, if you know his word for you, you can either reject it or you can come to the feast. Those are the options. Reject the idea that he will actually provide for you in the midst of uncertainty, or show up and sing. Loud CALL TO WORSHIP this is a psalm for a feast. And the question was, will you feast?
Will you celebrate what God has done? Will you come to worship? Will you come to declare the God who meets us in our need, who saves us from our slavery? And think about this. This is a call to the people of Israel, right, who had been brought out from slavery in Egypt.
But how much more is this a call to us who confess that God himself takes on flesh for us, God himself goes to a cross for us. He pays for our sins for us, he gives us his righteousness. As we heard from Second Corinthians, chapter five, right? I become the very righteousness of God. If you know that frankly, actually, let me say this, a test of whether or not you know that is, will you feast?
Will you sing? Do you find worship to be life in the midst of a dry land, joy that can exist in the midst of uncertainty and of sorrow?
How do you face the fact of uncertainty?
That's part of the question of this. And the invitation is to this God who does act for his people, who does speak to his people, and the invitation is, come and worship the Lord.
Sukkah, the feast, booze, in a way, was a test for the people of God. And worship, in a way, is a test for us.
We lay aside the uncertainties, lay them at the foot of the cross, and trust that if God gave us his very Son, how much more will he not give us? All things necessary for life and for faith.
So right now I want to say, if you are living in the mess, the busyness, the craziness, the uncertainty of life, which I'm sure many of you are, come and worship. Come and feast. When you do so, do not give up the habit.
Go to the feast. I think our Lord himself does this. In John chapter seven, he's like, ah, they might find out who I am and get all mad. So he gets it all disguised and he still goes to the feast to declare what God has done to hear the words to celebrate. Brothers, sisters, I think this is the great answer to our uncertainty.
Living into the life of God, living into the story of God, hearing the words of God and celebrating. Let me pray. Lord, I pray that we would to learn how to set a table in a way as you, Lord God, have done as we read in Psalm 23 in the presence of our enemies in the midst of uncertainty and the chaos of life. That would be those who are able to still celebrate what you have done to take time and remember and to listen to find life in the midst of chaos. God, I pray that you would be at work in us, that you give us listening ears, not just hearing, but really listening to you, learning from you, being reminded of your great acts for us and that you transform us through this.
We pray. Amen.

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