Living Tabernacles

An excerpt from my notes about the Feast of Tabernacles:  


         During the Feast of Tabernacles, the Israelites were to live in tent-like structures called tabernacles or booths as a reminder that the Lord had them dwell in booths when He brought them out of Egypt (Lev. 23:42, 43).  The Lord also dwelled in the Tent of Meeting, located in the center of Israel’s camp.  The words “tabernacles” and “booths” are two ways to translate the Hebrew word twks (“sukkot”).  The word “sukkot” denotes temporary shelters made by weaving branches together.  Coupling this with Jesus’s teaching in John 15 gives us an image of the Lord and His people dwelling in union: “I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit” (John 15:5).  We can almost re-imagine the camp of Israel as a vineyard where the branches weave in and out of each other to form a whole field of living tabernacles whose vines all twine out from the Lord’s Tabernacle in the center.  This is a picture of our living union with Christ.  Only within this vineyard—where life flows from the True Vine to and through and among the branches—can we bear fruit.  “No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine.  Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me” (John 15:4).