In a dark and bewildering time in my life, God gave me an oasis of joy.

With only two weeks’ notice, I joined a group headed to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles, or in Hebrew, Sukkot. Before the trip, I searched the Scriptures to learn the significance of this feast.

Already, God had shown me: He still keeps the times of celebration he designated in Scripture, and he still invites his people to keep them too.

In the Old Testament, Jehovah called the Jews to keep his appointed times according to the Mosaic Law. In Christ, the Father calls us to do so by the Spirit, who gives freedom, reveals the Word and teaches us all things.

Preparing to go to Jerusalem, I realized: The Spirit and the Word point to Sukkot as the Feast of Joy. I knew I could not summon joy – not when I felt so shattered. Yet I asked the Lord for what he had promised. And he answered.

The joy he gave wasn’t a giddy feeling – really up (then really down). Nor was it a “rose-colored glasses” view of life. Rather, joy bubbled up deep within me, yet somehow undergirded me. It was, at once, bedrock and an underground spring.

It did not tell me to deny hardship, injustice or grief. In fact, by welcoming joy, I found I had new permission to feel sadness, anger and fear. And each time I did, after they were spent, the joy remained.

Indeed, the joy of that week lifted me and carried me through a very hard time.

Eight invitations to joy

Regarding Sukkot, we read:

This festival to the Lord will last for seven days … The eighth day is another holy day on which you present your special gifts to the Lord. (Lev. 23:34, 36 NLT)

Celebrate this festival to honor the Lord your God at the place he chooses … This festival will be a time of great joy for all. (Deut. 16:15 NLT)

Our Lord set aside a full week in fall each year to give his people a new infusion of joy!¹ As I was invited to Jerusalem, to celebrate when I did not think I could, I invite you to the Feast of Joy – even if you cannot summon joy right now.

As we trace this feast through Scripture, we’ll see joy flowing – in times of darkness, as well as delight. And our Lord will invite us into his joy.

1 – The joy of God’s faithfulness

Exodus 23:16 calls it the Feast of Ingathering. Deuteronomy 16:13 calls it the Feast of Tabernacles (or Shelters). Leviticus 23 tells why both names fit:

After you have gathered the crops of the land, celebrate the festival to the Lord.

Live in temporary shelters for seven days: All native-born Israelites are to live in such shelters so your descendants will know that I had the Israelites live in temporary shelters when I brought them out of Egypt. I am the Lord your God. (Lev. 23:39, 42-43)

The Lord specified two purposes for this feast: to celebrate harvests in the Promised Land and to recall his faithfulness in the wilderness. Yet when he established the feast, his people had just left Egypt and entered a barren desert. They were 40 years away from living in permanent houses and reaping their first harvest.

Today, God’s invitations to joy may find us enjoying a harvest, braving a wilderness or facing who knows what else. Wherever we are, our Lord encourages us:

• Remember my provision in the past. “Remember how the Lord your God led you all the way in the wilderness” (Deut. 8:2).
• Believe my promises for the future. “For the Lord your God will bless you in all your harvest and in all the work of your hands, and your joy will be complete” (Deut. 16:15).
• Rejoice in me today. “Celebrate the Lord’s festival. Rejoice before the Lord your God” (Lev. 23:39, 40).

Joy flowed as the Israelites remembered all the way God had led them. Joy flowed as they celebrated each new harvest he gave them.

Whatever today holds, may we too remember the difficult seasons when God has sheltered us and faithfully led us. May we rejoice in his faithful provision for us.

2 – The joy of surrender to him

Surprisingly, God required far more sacrifices at the Feast of Joy than any other time. Most prominent and most numerous were burnt offerings.²

Other animal sacrifices in the Mosaic law – the sin offering, guilt offering and peace offering – only required that the entrails of the animal be burned. The meat was made available either to the priests or to the people as food. By contrast, the burnt offering was wholly consumed. It typified total surrender to the Lord.

Since Jesus’ death and resurrection, we express our surrender to God by becoming living sacrifices, instead of offering burnt ones. Romans 12:1-2 speaks of that surrender as a decisive act, followed by a lifetime of day-to-day choices.

Decisive act. I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God – this is your true and proper worship. (v. 1)

(In The Message:) Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering.

Daily choices. Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be [being] transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will.” (v. 2)

(In The Message:) “Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it.”

Decisively, daily, may we delight in the surrender that brings newness of life.

3 – The joy of experiencing his presence

King Solomon spent seven years building the temple of the Lord. When all Israel gathered for the first Feast of Tabernacles there:

The priests then brought the ark of the Lord’s covenant to its place in the inner sanctuary of the temple, the Most Holy Place, and put it beneath the wings of the cherubim.

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled his temple. (1 Kings 8:6, 10-11)

The people so delighted in God’s presence that they celebrated Sukkot for 14 days, instead of seven. Then, they “went home, joyful and glad in heart for all the good things the Lord had done” (1 Kings 8:66).

Joy flowed when God’s glory filled his temple. Today, our bodies are his temple. May we too testify to him:

You lead me in the path of life; I experience absolute joy in your presence; you always give me sheer delight. (Ps. 16:11 NET)

4 – The joy of making a new start

Solomon built the temple. But then he led God’s people to forsake the Lord. For centuries, they worshiped idols and refused to repent. Ultimately, the temple was destroyed, and the people went into exile.

Seventy years later, more than 42,000 of the exiles returned to Judah. They went back to rebuild the temple and their lives.

When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, the people assembled together as one in Jerusalem. Then Joshua son of Jozadak and his fellow priests and Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel and his associates began to build the altar of the God of Israel to sacrifice burnt offerings on it.

Despite their fear of the peoples around them, they built the altar on its foundation and sacrificed burnt offerings on it to the Lord. Then in accordance with what is written, they celebrated the Festival of Tabernacles (Ezra 3:1-4).

It’s normal to feel fear when tackling something new, especially when people are watching, intimidating and wanting us to fail, and especially when we’ve failed in the past. But the people in Zerubbabel’s day knew: Returning to Judah would count for nothing if they did not also return to the Lord with all their hearts. And so they faced down fear, built an altar and surrendered themselves to him.

Joy flowed when the returned exiles celebrated their first Sukkot back in the land. Afterward, as they laid the foundation for a new temple, they rejoiced again. Yet grief flowed too, as they remembered all they had lost.³

May we too face down fear – and give voice to the delight, and the pain, of making a new start.

5 – The joy of courageously following through

The exiles who returned to Judah with Zerubbabel made a good start. They rebuilt God’s altar and laid the foundation of the temple. But then severe opposition halted the work.

Stalled

Fourteen years later, the new temple still sat, only partly completed. The people still said, “The time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house” (Haggai 1:2).

Then two prophets rose up, Haggai and Zechariah, urging the leaders and the people to finish what God had sent them to do. On the seventh day of Sukkot, this word from the Lord came to Haggai:

“Who of you is left who saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now? Does it not seem to you like nothing? But now be strong, Zerubbabel,” declares the Lord. “Be strong, Joshua son of Jehozadak, the high priest. Be strong, all you people of the land,” declares the Lord, “and work. For I am with you,” declares the Lord Almighty. “My Spirit remains among you. Do not fear.” (Hag. 2:3-5, 9)

Blessed

It can happen to us. We make a new start in a good direction. We get in the big middle, run into what seem like insurmountable obstacles – and quit. We tell ourselves it just can’t be done, or the time isn’t right. And we do not realize how very much our unbelief is robbing us of joy.

One Sukkot in Zerubbabel’s day, God told people who had done just that:

Be strong. Be strong. Be strong, and work.

He reminded the people how they could do what they did not believe they could do:

For I am with you. My Spirit remains among you.

To their credit, they believed God, got back to work, encountered more obstacles, faced them down and ultimately completed the temple.

And note! Shortly after they said yes to God – and took up the work again, with hearts set to complete it – God said to them:

From this day on I will bless you (Hag. 2:19).

Joy flowed when Haggai and Zechariah prophesied, and the people rose up to complete the work they had left undone for so long. May we too find joy in courageously following through.

6 – The joy of welcoming God’s words

More than 90 years after the first exiles returned to Judah, Nehemiah led another group back to the land. They rebuilt the wall of Jerusalem in 52 days.

Hearing

Then, on the first day of the seventh month, all the people gathered in Jerusalem. For two days, Ezra the priest read to them from the book of the Law. As he read, they realized how far they had strayed from God’s ways. For one thing, they had not celebrated Sukkot God’s way:

They found written in the Law, which the Lord had commanded through Moses, that the Israelites were to live in temporary shelters during the festival of the seventh month.

So the people went out and brought back branches and built themselves temporary shelters on their own roofs, in their courtyards, in the courts of the house of God. The whole company that had returned from exile built temporary shelters and lived in them (Neh. 8:14-17).

The returned exiles could identify with their ancestors who had been slaves in Egypt. They too had been captives in a foreign land. They too had been sheltered by God during a long wilderness season. They too had seen his faithfulness in bringing them out from bondage and back to the land.

Obeying

When they realized what Scripture said about how to celebrate Sukkot, they rushed out to do it. And they grieved that they had ignored God’s Word for so long. As a result, they experienced:

The joy that is a bedrock. Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10).

The joy that is a spring. From the days of Joshua son of Nun until that day, the Israelites had not celebrated it like this. And their joy was very great (Neh. 8:17).

Joy flowed when Ezra read to the people from the Law, and they understood and embraced God’s ways. May we too “humbly accept the word” of the Lord (James 1:21).

7 – The joy of overflowing with the Spirit

Six months before his crucifixion, in the middle of the Feast of Tabernacles, Jesus went to Jerusalem and began to teach. By that time, the religious leaders headquartered in Jerusalem were planning to kill him. Yet “no one laid a hand on him, because his hour had not yet come” (John 7:30).

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive (John 7:37-39).

In Solomon’s day, the presence of God temporarily filled a building. After Jesus’ resurrection, the Spirit of God came to dwell within his people.

Joy flows when someone answers Jesus’ cry, “Come to me!” – and finds rivers of living water streaming from within them. May each of us be filled to overflowing with the Spirit.

8 – The joy of resting in God’s promises

At Sukkot, God calls for a week of celebration, bookended by rest.

The first day and the eighth day of the festival will be days of complete rest. (Lev. 23:39 NLT)

The last two mentions of Sukkot in the Old Testament are in Haggai and Zechariah. At Sukkot, Haggai urged the returned exiles to “be strong” and finish rebuilding the temple. He also prophesied a time when:

“I will fill this house with glory,” says the Lord Almighty. “And in this place I will grant peace.” (Hag. 2:7, 9)

Zechariah prophesied a time when:

The Lord will be king over the whole earth. On that day there will be one Lord, and his name the only name. Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. (Zech. 14:9, 16)

All Scripture tells us: Even in darkness, God’s promises remain. It reminds us, “Weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5).

Sometimes, morning arrives quickly, and we celebrate: God has done what he said! Sometimes, the night seems like it will never end. And sometimes, we do what Sarah did when she and Abraham still had no child: We quit cooperating with the Lord – and try to fulfill his promises our way.

That never works, dear one! Joy flows as we lay down self-effort and rest in him who keeps his promises.

May he bless you with a new infusion of the joy that is at once bedrock and a bubbling, underground spring.

---

This post replaces a series of mini-posts published Sep-Oct 2018, series title, “Sukkot: Feast of Joy.”

Image © David Ohmer, flickr, Evening Light on Cedar Lake Fountain, CC 2.0.

See also

• Celebrating God at his appointed times
• Woman walking on the water, you are ordained
• I will change your name
• The blessing of mourning
• The blessing of rest

Footnotes

1. In 2025, Sukkot begins the evening of Monday, October 6, and ends the evening of Monday, October 13. To find the dates of Sukkot for any given year, visit hebcal.com. Also, remember: In Christ, you have freedom to celebrate the Feast of Joy whenever and for however long he leads you. ↩︎
2. Numbers 29:12-38 lists the sacrifices required at Sukkot. ↩︎
3. See Ezra 3:1-13. ↩︎