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Shabbat Shalom. I have the privilege this morning of continuing our teachings on Sukkot. During the holiday of Sukkot, we remove ourselves for a time from the craziness of life and experience the peace of the Sukkah. The sukkah is a fragile and temporary shelter designed to expose us to the elements and to focus us on the Lord. As we sit in the Sukkah, we remember our time in the wilderness, longing for the Promised Land and all the promised blessings it contained.
It’s important to understand though that our wandering through the wilderness was more than just a difficult time in our history. The desert wilderness serves as a spiritual metaphor for life in this fallen world. Like the wilderness around Sinai, our lives are very harsh and difficult. In this life we are dependent on the blessings of the Lord for food, water, and even shelter. As we read in God’s Word, the rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike. Although there may be an addendum in some manuscripts that says the rain falls twice as much in Michigan!
We spend our lives in this wilderness, experiencing all the physical and spiritual troubles it brings. But like our ancestors before us, we who have become faithful to the Lord long to experience His promises. We long for his blessings and to be closer to Him. I believe this is the heart of Sukkot, longing to move from the wilderness of this life to the spiritual promises given freely by the Lord to all His Disciples. So, this morning I would like to spend some time exploring our longing for the Lord. We will look at the source of our longing and where righteous longing is leading us.
So why do we long for the Lord? What is so wrong with life right now on Earth? Well as a wise Rabbi once said, “We live in a world that is satanically controlled, in rebellion against God, and under a curse.” We experience this sad truth every day. Right now, we have wildfires that are decimating the forests of California, invasive “murder hornets”, hurricanes, flooding and the list goes on. We also have corruption in our country at all levels and even more corruption worldwide. I think of Myanmar, Afghanistan, and other countries that are under authoritarian regimes who commit barbaric atrocities daily.
You don’t need to be born-again to realize these are some big problems. But much of our world encourages us to tune sinfulness out. To focus on our own pleasure, our own lives, and obsess over what we have and how to get more. But if we have been blessed with the light that comes from our sinless Messiah, we mourn the darkness that surrounds us. We mourn when we see another innocent baby dying or our brothers and sisters martyred around the world. We mourn the injustice, inequality, and perversion that seeps into every part of our society.
Mourning our broken world and longing for the Lord to set things right is a sign we are truly His people. Our Messiah taught that those who mourn, who long for the Lord to heal all, are blessed. As we read in Matthew 5:4, “Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.” Until our Messiah returns, we will mourn the spiritual wilderness we are born into. But we are not alone in our mourning. We have been promised by the Lord that He will comfort us through the Holy Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit we have the power to endure the darkness that surrounds us for now.
The spiritual wilderness we walk through is more than just outward. Life in this world affects each of us personally to our physical core. On a personal level we have issues with our physical and mental health. As we get older our bodies also break down. As we live life, we will experience all kinds of diseases. From just random aches and pains to serious health problems like dementia or cancer.
Like a sukkah in a storm, we are relentlessly exposed to the elements of this world. It’s enough to make anyone upset and these truths do upset us. We don’t like to sit and contemplate these things, but it cannot be avoided. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that today issues such as depression and suicide are on the rise as more people feel hopeless than ever before. The world can be a very dark and painful place and has been since the fall of our first parents.
For those joined to Messiah Yeshua, part of our longing for the Lord is also longing for our promised resurrected bodies. We have the promise of resurrected bodies as we live with the Lord forever. I love how 2 Corinthians 5:1-5 illustrates this truth, “For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, an eternal house in heaven, not built by human hands. Meanwhile we groan, longing to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, because when we are clothed, we will not be found naked. For while we are in this tent, we groan and are burdened, because we do not wish to be unclothed but to be clothed instead with our heavenly dwelling, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. Now the one who has fashioned us for this very purpose is God, who has given us the Spirit as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.”
We do groan in these bodies, sometimes literally, from the aches, pains, and more serious issues that happen as we go through life. Using the beautiful imagery of tents or a Sukkah, we see our longing as Disciples to experience the Lord in our permanent bodies. The Sukkah, with its fragile walls and design reminds us of our fragile bodies. While we are in these bodies, we have so many burdens. These tents will eventually fall apart and then we will pass away. I think of all those I have known and loved who have faded until they passed away.
No matter how many times we experience it, we still long for death and suffering to come to an end. Our fallen world would have us believe that death is natural. That this is how we were designed, yet in our hearts we know different. Death always feels wrong and so we struggle with loss and grief. As Believers we can be sure that death isn’t natural because Scripture proclaims that death is our enemy and will be destroyed. (1 Cor. 15:26). So, we long to be clothed with our heavenly bodies and experience eternal life with Messiah Yeshua forever. We have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit as a promise that eternal life with Him will be coming soon.
I don’t think anything I have said so far is surprising or new. These facts about what life in this wilderness is like is something we all understand as we grow older. But every human being has a longing deep inside for something better. Longing for a better world and for better lives. To experience light and joy, instead of darkness and sadness. Our world offers many solutions but none of them have worked or will work. For all our progress and enlightenment, we still deal with the same struggles recorded thousands of years ago in God’s Word. We cannot in our own power move from the wilderness of this world to somewhere better.
So, we have discussed where our longing comes from, but what exactly should we be longing for? The world we live in tells us we should long for more money, power, attention, and things. That we should be satisfied with the things of this life and try not to think too much about it ending. This is of course the opposite of what Sukkot’s righteous longing is pointing us towards. Sukkot points us forward to a time where we will tabernacle, live with, the Lord forever.
But what does it mean to long to Tabernacle with the Lord? Rabbi Glenn’s message this morning will discuss this in more detail but let me touch on it briefly now. Longing for the Lord is a longing to experience life forever with Him in His promised city. If the physical wilderness our people went through represents the spiritual wilderness of life in this world, then the Promised Land of Israel points us to a future spiritual reality. A New Jerusalem greater than any human city. Our longing to live forever with the Lord in His city is also not new. Our ancestors like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shared in this longing. They walked by faith through their wilderness, looking forward to the Lord’s promises and not living for this world. As we read in Hebrews 11:16,” Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them”
The patriarchs, and those who came after, longed to experience the promises of the Lord. They refused to live for the wilderness of this world that is fading away. Instead, they were being spiritually led towards the New Jerusalem, a city not made by human hands that will never be destroyed.
Those of us joined to Messiah also join in their longing for Adonai. We long for the New Jerusalem and an end to our wandering in this spiritual wilderness. We long to see death, mourning, crying, and pain wiped away. The heart of Sukkot is a longing to truly tabernacle with the Lord forever. We too long for our earthly Sukkahs to be replaced with buildings that will never perish. Most of all we long for our Messiah’s return, speedily and in our days, so that all these promises will be fulfilled.
Every human being, saved or not, has longings, many of them self-obsessed and sinful. But like those who came before us we need to have a righteous longing for God. We need to push away the longings that our dark world wants us to embrace. Our Messiah taught us to seek after the treasures of heaven which will never be destroyed. We’ve talked about some of those treasures this morning. They include an end to mourning and bodily decay among so many more.
Sukkot challenges us to examine who or what we are longing for. Are we longing for the return of the Messiah or are we longing for something else that will pass away? Are we longing for the things of this world or the New Jerusalem in the next? Because as our Messiah also taught, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
It is my prayer this morning that the Lord would comfort all those who mourn the sinfulness of this life. May He satisfy the true longing of our hearts for a much better country. May each of us be led by the Lord through the wilderness of this life and to the New Jerusalem, where we will tabernacle with Him forever and ever.