The Succah And Its Fruits.

By Elon Moreh 

This originally appeared in the Moriel Buletin Oct. 2011.

The Autumnal Feasts have come and gone, Yom Kippur is now past, and the Mediterranean has turned from a calm still blue, to an often tempestuous and dangerous body of water. In ancient times sailing during the winter season (after Yom Kippur see Acts 27:9) was a perilous undertaking, as recorded in the book of Acts. Rainy season is here and the temperature has dropped by around 10 degrees or more indoors, and an another visible sign of the season, is that all around town you can see the remnants of the succot (booths) put out for the municipality to dispose of. When people construct a succah, very often they hang all manner of things up inside. Recent innovations include tinsel and fairy lights! But traditionally people hang up different fruits. This is because Succot is also the Festival of Ingathering, of the final harvest of the year. Of course the festivals and the Biblical year teach us of the whole history of redemption, and Succot speaks of the “Word who came and tabernacled amongst us”, and also the time of the Millennial Kingdom, and beyond into eternity when God will tabernacle with us and He will be our God and we will be His people -for ever. (Rev. 22) However there is another message of Succot and another meaning of the succah, and that one of a more individual nature. The imagery of the succah is used in a number of places to refer to the mortal human body in its fragility and temporality.

“For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked. For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. Now he that hath wrought us for the selfsame thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit. Therefore we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: (For we walk by faith, not by sight:) We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad.” 2 Cor 5:1-10

A friend once told me that at the end of Succot he came to take down the succah and the fruit which had been hung up there were still good, ripe and perfect to eat. The palm leaves and fronds are withered, but the fruit remains. This is a lovely illustration of a profound spiritual truth. That when our tabernacle of this body is taken down, the only thing that we will take into eternity is the fruit that remains.

"Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain:" (Joh 15:16).

What is then the fruit that remains?

May I suggest that it is none other than character of Christ within us, our conformity to the image of the Son. (Rom 8:29) Christ in us the hope of glory! (Col 1:27). Eye hath not seen nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man what God hath prepared for those who love Him, there is a glorious future awaiting those who die in the Lord. But we must also not forget the words of warning and exhortation that accompany Paul's message in 2 Cor 5.

"Wherefore we labour, that whether present or absent we may be accepted of Him, for we must all appear before the judgement seat of Christ, that every one may receive the things done in his body according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad."

Peter, in his 2nd Epistle, uses the selfsame imagery and gives the selfsame message, but even more clearly.

"Giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall: For so an entrance shall be ministered unto you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth. Yea, I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; Knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath shewed me .”

It is perfectly possible to have a genuine calling from God and be genuinely gifted from the Holy Spirit, yet still conduct oneself in a fleshly manner. It is possible to "serve the LORD" after a fashion for many years, but still be a spiritual infant, wallowing in carnal behaviour like the Corinthian Church. It is possible to have been a believer for many years, but have walked most of them as Paul said "as [mere] men" (1 Cor 3:3). It is possible to know the Bible very thoroughly, and be fully cognizant of its doctrines, but never to have allowed it to impact our lives or change us one jot. I know a number of people who are like this and despite having been many years in the Lord, whose behaviour is that of a spoilt willful child, unable to accept any will other than their own and utterly unteachable, whose responses to what happens to them are not what one would expect of a disciple of Christ. May God deliver us from ever being like this!

Yakov has often spoken about the problems inherent in Calvinism. One of which is an unbalanced approach to the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints. This doctrine is popularly referred to as “OSAS” or “Once Saved Always Saved”, or "Unconditional Eternal Security". To produce this doctrine certain passages of Scripture have to be glossed over or “card-sharped” away. The end result of this is that we have an unhealthily large number of people filling churches who are in such a state of carnal security that they think that after having “made a commitment” or “prayed the prayer”, their subsequent conduct has no bearing at all on their eternal condition. This however is not the teaching of the Apostles or of Jesus. The Scriptures are replete with warnings to believers, which would be totally unnecessary if it was impossible to fall away, to which we would do well to take heed, in the perilous times in which we live. We must always take into account the whole counsel of Scripture on a subject.. Tabernacles and its fructic imagery has a lot to teach us in this regard.

John the same disciple who recorded Jesus' words above in John 15, writes in his first letter:

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (I Jn 3:2)

A glorious hope indeed. But he prefaces it in the previous chapter by:

“little children, abide in him; that, when he shall appear, we may have confidence, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.” (I Jn 2:28)

Is not this an echo of Jesus' words in John 15:

"If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned."

To abide in Christ means that you have to have been in Him in the first place. We should remember that both the wise man and the foolish man heard the teachings of Jesus, but it was the wise man who actually obeyed the word, and in so doing built his house upon the rock (Matt 7). As a recent speaker at our congregation remarked, "If you are not obeying the Word of God then you have not really understood it at all." We need to take stock of ourselves and see if we are walking “as men” or as sons of God. There are a number of believers who will receive a nasty shock at the judgement seat of the Messiah. Many who were, seemingly full of good works from a distance, will have little but ashes left, because these were wrought in strife and vainglory as these individuals never really submitted to the Lord. Let us be absolutely clear, we can take nothing physical out of this world, nor anything that is of the flesh, such as the approval of men. We are not called to be emperors of our own little domains, but stewards of our heavenly King. We are not to camouflage our own ambitions under the cloke of serving Him, but to serve Him and Him alone, applying the Cross to all that is of the flesh. The only thing that we can carry from this life into the next is the character of Christ outworked in us by the Holy Spirit as we submit to the Word of God and apply it to our lives. Nothing but the gold of Jesus' nature can will abide the fire of God's holy presence. The message of Succot is a glorious one, but it also exhorts us to take the Lord seriously, to work out our salvation with fear and trembling because it is God that worketh in us, to follow after holiness without which no man shall see the Lord, to give diligence to add those qualities of which Peter speaks, to abide in Him and His word in us, that we may bring forth much fruit.