Dwell | Booths and Tables | 1 John 2:15-27 | Week 3

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The Israelite people were a people committed to memory.  They were committed to remembering the journey that they'd walked as a nation and as a people.  They had wired into the rhythm of their year certain mile-markers that they'd cross that were reminders for them....to not forget the story.  One of those mile-markers is called The Feast of Booths.  It would happen around late fall, every year.  The command came out of Leviticus 23:42-43.  You 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.  Every year, an Israelite family would build a booth.  It was a temporary structure, one that they would decorate with some of the fruits of Palestine.  They would make these booths---they would call them tabernacles or, in Hebrew, Sukkot, which is the name of the festival or celebration.  They would take them into the wilderness and they would camp for a week.  And they would remember.  Remember when we were enslaved in Egypt and God miraculously brought us out.  Remember when He parted the Red Sea.  Remember when we walked through on dry ground.  Remember when He preserved us for forty years in the wilderness.  Remember.  

Can you imagine being a little kid with your family, your parents and your grandparents, and building a booth and going and putting it in the wilderness, and sitting around the fire and recounting the stories?  Telling of the faithfulness of God?  When I was growing up, my family and I did a few camping trips, not too many.  I can remember each of them.  I can remember sitting around a fire outside of Lake Tahoe.  My dad, with his guitar, taught us the song "It Only Takes a Spark to Get a Fire Going."  I was wondering, at the time, why it was taking us so long to get OUR fire going, but that's a whole other story!  I can remember it.  You have to think of yourselves as....back in their shoes....they were so committed.   These are going to be things that we pass down from generation to generation.  These are going to be stories that we tell.  We refuse---the nation of Israel said---we refuse to forget the faithfulness of God.  Because there's going to be times that it could happen.  There's going to be times when His provision in the desert seems like it's a really, really, really, long way off.  There's going to be times when it feels like we're running out of water in the parched land.  It's going to be these stories that preserve us....."