Learning to Follow the Spirit | Lessons From the Feast of Tabernacles

And when the fire and the cloud did move, they had to move. What that teaches me is that I need to learn how to move when the Spirit of the Lord moves and cease and stop when the Spirit of the Lord is not moving. You know, another real prominent focus of the Feast of Tabernacles. It's the Feast of Rejoicing. It's the Feast of Simcha of Joy in Hebrew. And we read in the book of Leviticus where the Lord's giving instructions for a cecote. He says, "Now on the first day, I'm in verse number 40 of Leviticus 23. And the Lord is speaking through Moses here, and on the first day you shall take for yourselves the foliage of beautiful trees, palm branches, and bows of leafy trees, and willows of the brook. And you shall get this now, rejoice before the Lord your God for seven days." So one of the primary aspects of the Feast of Tabernacles is the Feast of Rejoicing. And there were actually three times of year that Israel was commanded to come to Jerusalem and to rejoice before the year. The three, what we call the Pilgrim Feast, where Israelites from all over would come to Jerusalem, pass over an unleavened bread, you know, that season, and then a shavuot or Pentecost. That was the second Pilgrim Feast, and then Tabernacles was the third. God commanded them to come to Israel, to Jerusalem, rather, and to rejoice. Now notice that the Lord called Israel to come and rejoice before him three times a year. So what does that say to me? You've got to do all three, you've got to complete something. It completes something, and you know what else it says to me, that God's idea for us, people that he created in his own image, is to rejoice continually, to do it as a way of life. The three means that God wants us to be people that rejoice in him and that are happy. And when I say happy, I know that, you know, tough times happen, we can't always be ha-ha, but I'm saying God wants us to rejoice in him because he's happy. As a principle, as a principle. So this is just kind of how he wants us to live. I'm thinking of the Zachariah verse in Zachariah chapter 14 at the end of Zachariah 14, where the Bible says that in the Millennial Age or after Armageddon,

that God will require the peoples of the earth to come to Jerusalem every Tabernacles. And if they don't, actually, they'll be a curse on them. Yes. So like, I mean, we talk about celebrating these feasts right now. I mean, you may not be celebrating it right now, but in the Millennial Age, they're going to be required to celebrate it. Exactly. They'll be required to rejoice with him and celebrate with him. Exactly. Zachariah tells us that any nation that does not come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles will be cut off. So what that tells me is that one of the principles of the Feast of Tabernacles of Secote to remember as Christians is to remember of the coming of the end of the age that it's culminating. And the Tabernacles will be a part of that divine culmination after Armageddon. All the nations that are left will worship the Lord, Jew and Gentile alike during the Feast of Tabernacles. So Tabernacles reminds us to have what's called an eschatological point of view that we're not just looking at the here and now. We're looking at where things are going. Right. Right. I love Zachariah 14. I encourage, if you haven't read Zachariah 14, it's amazing. It talks about the Messiah's return back to the Mount of Olives and ends with Tabernacles. I think it's just an amazing chapter of the Bible. And I love that it connects to one of God's appointed days. Yeah. So many things here. You know, it's interesting, Dustin, that when the children of Israel lived in these temporary Secote for 40 years, there was a main Tabernacle in the center. All the tribes camped around the main Tabernacle, the main Mishkhan that was in the center. That was the Mishkhan that God told Moses to build where he would meet with his people at. That was the one that the Lord said. I want you to have the, you know, the outer area. Then I want you to have the Holy Place, which contained the altar of incense, the table of showbread, the golden menorah. And then inside was the Holy Place, which contained the ark of the covenant.

Right. And over that, that Mishkhan, over that Tabernacle, was a divine pillar of fire that shone every single night for 40 years. Ushkhan, Israel stayed camped right where they were. But every so often the fire would lift and the cloud would lift. And when the fire lifted and the cloud lifted and moved, all of Israel had to pick up camp and follow the fire and the cloud. And if they never knew when it was going to move, it was completely unpredictable. So either be there for weeks, weeks or days? Yes. They never knew. But think what would have happened if they wouldn't have moved when the fire moved and the cloud moved if they said, you know what, I don't feel like move. They would have died. That wouldn't have been good. The man I wouldn't have been there where they were. There would have been no supernatural provision left for them. Wow. Just like you said. Wow, man does not live by bread alone. But by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. So if God says move, you better move. Yeah. Because if he if he moved and you didn't move, you're going to die. Like you said, there'd be no manna. And if he didn't move, but you decided you wanted to move and you move, you're going to die in the wilderness. Well, that's the lesson God was teaching them. They didn't have the option. That's humbling. They did not have the option to do things on their own. They had to rely on God. And what a lesson because many of us, you know, I think we don't always feel like we're in a trial. Sometimes we feel like we're in a trial. Sometimes we feel like everything's okay. And what a lesson to realize that even when things are okay, we need to still every day, get up and be relying on God. God, I don't want to move unless you move. I don't. Lord, I can do things on my own. I don't want to do things on my own though. Yeah. You know, it's really, there's really deep, deep insight here, Dustin, regarding this principle that you're sharing with us. And that is this, is that this, remember, the fire was a manifestation of the Ruachakadash, the Holy Spirit. Yeah. And the cloud was a manifestation of God's Ruachah's Holy Spirit. And again, whenever it moved, they had to move. If it stayed, they had to stay put. And it took a lot of, I'm sure that there were times when Israel wanted to move, but they couldn't move unless the cloud and fire moved. And when the fire and the cloud did move, they had a move. And that tells me this in our life, that if we don't move, when the Holy Spirit's leading us to move, we're going to miss out on His fullness. It's really something to meditate on deeply. Here they were, they were being trained by God. They're being disciplined by God. The fire that's there by night, the clouds there by day, they had to stay put unless that fire and cloud moved. And when it did move, they had a move. And

the fire and the cloud were manifestations of the Holy Spirit. What that teaches me is that I need to learn how to move when the Spirit of the Lord moves and cease and stop when the Spirit of the Lord is not moving. And it takes real discipline and training to be able to abide in the Spirit. So you think, for example, the two opposite problems people have. There are some people, their problem is they're running ahead of God all the time. You know, they're running, running, running in the flesh, trying to accomplish all these things, but it's in the power of the flesh. But again, if Israel would have moved before the fire and the cloud moved, they would have been out there in the flesh and the resources would have dried up. That's why Jesus said, "A bite in me and you'll bear much fruit from apart from me," He said, "You can do nothing." So a lot of us need help because we're like busy all the time doing all these things, but so much of what we're doing, it's not Spirit generator. We're not following the Spirit. We're running ahead of the Spirit. We're in the flesh. So how do you stop that? One of the ways you stop that is to do what God did to Israel. He had them to stop and just be at a place. He trained them by making them stop. You're not going anywhere. Unless I move, you sit right where you're at. And so for a lot of you right now, you're running ahead of God in your life. You haven't learned how to wait on the Lord. You know, the Lord said, "See striving. Be still and know that I am God." And so this is a discipline. I mean, this is a choice that you and I have. We can spend time every day just sitting before the Lord, not on our phone, sitting before the Lord, maybe just listening to beautiful instrumental worship music, maybe with the Word in front of us or other Christian literature, but just being still. What God does in this practice is He teaches us how to abide in Him. we were celebrating Yom Kippur. And we were talking about, she was asking me, "How do you feel the weight of, you know, sin?" Because they were talking about Yom Kippur. And we were talking about how you have to quiet your mind and how hard it is and how our minds just wonder from this to this to this so fast that it's very hard to discipline ourselves to just sit before the Lord and wait for Him and allow Him to speak and to keep focused on one thing and not let our minds go everywhere. Yeah. It really is. We need God's supernatural help. If people will make the commitment, maybe some are just going to start with 15 minutes a day. I don't know what it is. But let's say anybody can do that. If people will make the commitment and they say, "Lord, I want to be able to be led by Your Spirit. I want to be able to abide in You. I want

to have that revelation in Your situation like you were saying right now concerning Yom Kippur. How can we have the revelation of the value of the blood of Jesus and what it costs God to send His Son to shed His blood because of our sin that will understand more fully the weight and the gravity of the destructiveness of sin? How can I grasp that more fully on Yom Kippur? Well, it comes by revelation. It comes by revelation. And we have such a difficult time stopping our mind. But God oftentimes will give revelation when our mind is stiller. And so, getting back to the comment that I was making, build the field and they will come. If people will make a commitment to say to the Lord, "Lord, I want to still myself so that You can give me more revelation. I'm going to begin right now without exception. I'm going to make an exception. I'm going to take 15 minutes at the beginning of each day and just listen to beautiful worship music, not with words. I wouldn't even put words. I would just put instrumental worship on so that nothing can, you know, and just let the Holy Spirit soothe you and bring you down into greater depth and peace. What I believe will happen is you'll begin to receive more revelation. It might seem like an impossible task because our mind is going so many directions. But one of the things that you can do is to be intentional and say, "Lord, help me to be in a position where I can greater perceive the leading of Your Spirit. I'm going to create this place in my life. I'm going to create a sanctuary in my soul by giving you this time for you to mold my soul and my thoughts so that I can better be able to perceive you and follow Your Spirit just like Israel did in the wilderness when they were living in the boots." This is something that we really can't afford not to do this. I mean, we've got to spend time, we've got to take time to set aside that's dedicated to God every day of our lives. Just like you take, you know, man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We typically three times a day we eat, sometimes snack in between. You know, Daniel, he had set times. You know, he actually got in trouble for it, breaking the law to pray so many times a day. And then even Jesus, even Jesus, if God in the flesh, Jesus had to get away, climb a mountain, spend time with God, how much more do we need to be having dedicated set times with God in our life? Yeah. You know, the Bible says that we're a chosen race, a royal priesthood. So where's that term priesthood comes from? It comes from the Hebrew Bible. The first thing the

priesthood every day is they burn sweet incense unto the Lord. So this really is important, Dustin, as you're saying, I mean, this is a choice. There's no excuses. You're either going to choose to love God and put Him first and set aside time from every morning like the priesthood to present yourself to Him. I know you're not perfect. I know that our mind will wander. I know that our attitude won't always be right. But if you simply make a decision to start your day with God, listen to beautiful, sacred, instrumental worship music, just sit before Lord. He sees you doing it. He sees you doing it. Even if when you do it, your mind is wandering. Even if when you do it, you feel like your heart's going astray. He still sees that you're sticking with the discipline. You know what? He's a moral word to those who diligently seek Him. Stick with the discipline and listen, beloved friends. If we love God, we'll make time for Him. And you know what, Rabbi, I believe that as we spend time with God, as we experience this wilderness journey, God's going to do supernatural things. It wasn't all bad that they experienced. wilderness. He fed you manna which your fathers didn't know. It wasn't just all bad things. God supernaturally responded to their needs and he supernaturally fed them. He supernaturally clothed them as we talked about and their clothes didn't wear out. They're supernatural in the wilderness as well. So getting back to your point earlier about participating in these appointed days of Yahweh of the Lord gives us a spiritual, too many. It brings us into divine alignment. To this point one of the things that we're reminded of as we participate in the feast of tabernacles is the supernatural activity of God in our life. Even as the Lord was supernaturally involved in his people's life, good times and bad times, supernaturally giving them water out of rocks, supernaturally providing manna six days a week for four years. The Lord is supernaturally involved in your life and we want to be aware of that because a lot of God's children, they don't have their antennas up enough to perceive the supernatural glory. You know when Yeshua was crucified the Father spoke but some people said oh we're thundered. Some people perceive the supernatural and other people just attributed it to the natural. I love that. Thunder or God's speaking? Yeah. Two really different things. Yeah. There's no question about it. The more we open ourself up to the Godhead we're sitting before the Lord right now recognizing that we have nothing but you God. You're all there is at the end of the day from you and through you and to you are all things. All these beautiful things that have come into our life have come from you. The more we open ourselves up to him and

get the portal of our soul open for the divine to come in that we create a channel for him the more aware we're going to be on a very regular basis to see God's supernatural working in our life both circumstantially and simply in the spirit. I love what Jesus said. I didn't come to those who are whole. I came to those who are sick because when you're sick, when you're in a trial, when you're in something hard, you're the one that gets the miracle. You know, if you're not blind, you don't need to be healed of blindness. But when you're going through something hard, it's an opportunity for God to do something supernatural in our lives. And in a wilderness season is exactly the time to be believing God to do something supernatural in your life. It is the perfect opportunity for God to move. Amen. Amen. Well said. And you know what? God's going to get you through whatever trial you ever face in life, whether it's something you're going through now, something you'll go through in the future, look back, think about this message. God's going to get you through it and he's got good for you that he's going to bring out of your life that he wouldn't have been able to do without bringing you through the supernatural challenge. And God's purpose is to do good for us in the end. That's why doesn't we wave the lulov here as the coat to remind ourselves of all the good things that God has brought and will bring into our lives. So I think it'd be fitting as we close the show today to talk about the lulov and what it means and to participate together, both you and I and our audience, just to take a second a moment to thank Father, to thank Yahweh, to thank Jesus, to thank Yeshua, to thank the Holy Spirit for all the good things that He's done in our life and all the good that He's got planned for us. Amen. And Rabbi, so tell me here, what do we have in the lulov? We have three different plants. These are the four species, three different plants. We have the willow, the myrtle, and the palm. And then we've got this fruit light here. It looks like a lemon. It's called an ettrog. It's a citrus fruit. And all these these four species are all from the land of Israel and they represent the beauty and the bounty of God's fullness in our life. And I love looking at it. It's so beautiful. And so we're going to wave this. And maybe you could wave this for us. We'll start waving towards Jerusalem. Okay. And we're always going to wave towards the east first. We're going to wave in all four directions, starting towards Jerusalem all the way around, then up, then down. And this symbolizes that every good thing that's coming to our life has come to us from Hashem, from God Himself. So Jew and Gentile, one in Messiah, Dustin is going to wave the lulov on behalf of us all here. Heavenly Father, I just bless you for

your provision, Lord of fruit and vegetables and all the food that we have. God, I thank you that you are all that we need God. Thank you for providing for us during your season's God and every day. In the book of Numbers, chapter 6, the Lord gave instructions to Moses and Aaron to speak this blessing over his people. And the Lord said, "When you speak these words over my people, I will place my name on them and bless them. Receive the impartation of the Lord's blessings." "Ya'va, re'thi'ahwe, vai'ish ma re'hah, ya'il ya'we, ana've lehah, vihun'e'hah, ya'il ya'we, ana've lehah, vihasim lehah, shalom." The Lord blessed you and keep you. The Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift you up by His countenance and the Lord give you, beloved one, His peace. God bless you and shalom. (gentle music)