Deuteronomy 16:13-15

Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days, after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine.

Harvest home

The Feast of Tabernacles was the harvest home of Israel. Where is the antitype of the festival of Tabernacles? The vision of the “great multitude which no man could number” is a vision throughout of a heavenly Feast of Tabernacles; the harvest home of the Church triumphant.

I. These festivals are occasions of hospitality and of reunion. A selfish life is an unchristian life. A man might possibly remember God in solitude, a monastery has ere now fostered devotion: but there is one virtue which cannot be practised in seclusion--charity; the Gospel virtue--without which we are nothing. The very exertion which it costs some men to come out is salutary. If some are made frivolous by the love of society, some are made selfish by isolation from their kind.

II. Two things were especially required of the Israelites when they assembled for their three annual feasts: first, that they should not appear before the lord empty; secondly, that children and servants, the Levite and the stranger, the fatherless and widow, should be allowed to rejoice with them. The feast only becomes a blessing when it remembers God, and remembers man.

III. The law of God was read over, once in seven years, to the assembled Israelites at their Feast of Tabernacles. If there be a time when we remember duty, surely it should be when our hands are full of gifts. A time of feasting, nay, a time of prosperity, nay, a time of unmarked, of average sufficiency, brings its own peculiar risk of practical ungodliness.

IV. Yet we recognise in this festival the comforting side of true religion. God’s voice never comes to make us miserable. If it condemns, it is that we may rise out of condemnation into a state altogether joyous. A harvest home is a glimpse of the love and of the peace and of the joy of the Gospel.

V. It is also a memento of the place of thankfulness in the Gospel. Is there any test so condemning as that which touches us on the point of gratitude? Who really gives God thanks for life, for health, for motion, for speech, for reason? Well may we have one day in the year set apart for the work of simple praise.

VI. Recognise in this celebration the identification of the God of nature and providence with the God of revelation and of the Gospel. The things that are seen become a very sign and sacrament of the things that are not seen. The harvest of the natural world indicates to us, by its marvellous yet now familiar phenomena, the working of the same power which alone can melt the heart of stone, and impress upon a trifling soul the realities of a life and a home in heaven. VII. Finally, let the service which gives thanks for an earthly harvest carry your thoughts to that great “reaping after sowing,” which is before every one of us, in the resurrection of the body and in the eternity which is yet beyond (Matthew 13:39; Galatians 6:7). God grant us all a place in that ingathering, the close of a world’s labour, the inauguration of a heavenly rest! (Dean Vaughan.)