Sukkot, or Tabernacles, is the third and final of the great pilgrim festivals of Israel
when all the males of Israel had to appear before the Lord at the temple In
Jerusalem. The ancient rabbis saw a significance in the festival not
only for Israel but also the nations, and the
prophet Zechariah foresaw a day when the Gentile would go up to
Jerusalem to celebrate the festival with the Jews. Thousands of Gentiles from
around the world travel to Israel every year to keep the festival. Although I'm not criticizing Christians who make the annual pilgrimage to Israel for the festival each year, are they really fulfilling the prophecy of Zechariah 14, or is there an even greater significance to the festival? What is the
significance of Tabernacles for Christians today?
1.
Tabernacles is a Happy
Festival
In the Jewish
calendar, the Festival of Tabernacles always falls on the 15th day of the
seventh month, Tishri. In the West, we follow a different calendar, and this
year Tabernacles fell on October 13th.
The ancient Israelites
were commanded to live in tabernacles for seven days, so that future
generations might remember that God made Israel live in tents after redeeming
them from Egypt. Tabernacles is a joyful celebration at which religious Jews remember God’s
care and provision for Israel when they travelled from Egypt to the Promised
Land, living in tabernacles.
There are several names for the festival. Its Hebrew name is ‘Sukkot’
but it is also ‘the Festival
of Ingathering’, because the festival celebrates the gathering of the final
harvest of the year.
It is also the ‘Season
of our Rejoicing’ because it is the only festival at which the Jewish people are
commanded to rejoice for seven days.
Tabernacles is such a great festival that some Jews refer to it simply
as ‘the Festival’.
2.
Tabernacles is a Harvest
Festival
In Deuteronomy
16:16, all the men of Israel were commanded to go to the temple in Jerusalem
three times every year: at Passover; at Pentecost and at the Feast of
Tabernacles. All three festivals occurred
at harvest times.
Harvest in the
Bible is full of symbolism about God’s purposes for Israel and the nations.
Jeremiah 2:3 tells us that when God chose Israel, she was ‘holy to the LORD, the firstfruits
of his harvest’. Where there
are firstfruits, harvest will follow. When God described Israel as ‘the
firstfruits of his harvest’, he intended that the people should know he would one day have a full harvest from among
the nations.
Throughout the Bible,
the concept of Israel as the ‘firstfruits’ of God’s harvest occurs in different
ways. For example, in Genesis 12:1-3 God called Abraham to be ‘a blessing’ and
promised that through him ‘all families of the earth will be blessed’.
The writer of Psalm
67 seems to have Genesis 12:3 in mind when he prays for God to be 'gracious' to Israel and 'bless' Israel and make his face shine on Israel so that the nations will
know God’s salvation. As it goes with Israel, so it goes with the nations. According to Genesis 12 and Psalm 67, the nations cannot be blessed with salvation apart from Israel being blessed first.
The psalmist's prayer for Israel
also recalls the Aaronic blessing of Numbers 6:24-26: ‘The Lord bless you and
keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you, and be gracious to you…’
Although the high
priests had pronounced the Aaronic blessing on Israel for hundreds of years, the writer
of Psalm 67 knows the nation was not experiencing them in their fullest sense.
Only when the Messiah came could Israel know the blessings of God’s mercy, his
grace and the shining of his face in their fullest sense. The songs of praise celebrating the coming
of Messiah, sung by Mary, Zachariah and Simeon in the first two chapters of
Luke’s Gospel, are full of the themes of blessing, light, grace, mercy and
peace. The Aaronic blessing could be experienced by Israel in their fulness only when Messiah came. But after Messiah had come in grace to bless the
Jewish people with peace and shine the light of God on them, he sent out his apostles
to proclaim salvation to the nations.
3.
Tabernacles is a Prophetic
Festival
When God was
about to redeem Israel from Egypt, he declared that Israel was his ‘firstborn’
son. Just as the ‘firstfruits’ carry the promise of a full harvest, so the
‘firstborn’ in a family anticipates even more children. So if Passover looks
back to when God redeemed Israel his ‘firstborn’ from Egypt, the Festival of Tabernacles
looks forward to a time when he will have a family from all the nations.
According to the
instructions given in Numbers 29, seventy bulls were offered over the seven
days of the festival, starting with 13 on the first day and finishing with seven
on the last day. The later rabbis taught that there were seventy nations
in the world and that at Sukkot the 70 bulls were offered on their behalf.
Zechariah
14:16-19 foresees a time when the nations will keep the Festival of Tabernacles,
and over the last thirty years, Christians from all over the world have begun
to go to Jerusalem each year to keep the Festival in the belief that they are
fulfilling Zechariah’s prophecy. Although I am not trying to prevent Christians going to Jerusalem at this time of the year but I think the fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy is far greater than those Christians imagine.
In Revelation 7,
John sees a vision of 144,000 people from all the tribes of Israel. Chapter 14 presents
a similar vision but with additional details to help us understand chapter 7
better.
Chapter 14:1-7 tells us that the 144,000 were ‘redeemed from among
mankind as firstfruits for God and the Lamb’ and in chapter 7, the vision of
the 144,000 ‘firstfruits’ is followed by a vision of a vast crowd of people
from all nations, so great that no one can count them.
Here we see both
Israel, God’s ‘firstfruits’, and the full harvest from all nations. After the
vision of the 144,000 ‘firstfruits’ in chapter 14, John sees the Son of Man, Jesus,
reaping a great harvest from the nations with the sharp sickle in his hand.
The letter of Ya'akov (James) is probably the earliest New Testament letter, written when almost all
believers were Jews. In verse 1 of the letter, Ya'akov addresses his readers as ‘the
twelve tribes in the Diaspora’ and in 1:18 he calls them ‘a kind of firstfruits of God’s
creatures’. I suggest that the letter of Ya'akov is addressed to the
144,000 (or at least some of them), as the ‘firstfruits’ of the harvest of God
and the Lamb.
If we look a
little more closely at Revelation 7:15-17, we see that the believers from the nations are keeping the Festival of Tabernacles!
On the last day of the Festival of Tabernacles, on Mount Zion in Jerusalem thousands
of Jewish men dressed in white robes with palm branches sing the ‘Great Hosanna’.
But in John’s vision, the people in white robes with palm branches singing the ‘Great
Hosanna’ are all from the nations, not Israel!
Here is the true
fulfilment of Zechariah’s prophecy. The nations are keeping the
Festival of Tabernacles in the heavenly Jerusalem!
4.
Tabernacles is a Messianic
Festival
Without water, there can be no harvest. At the time of Jesus, a joyful
thanksgiving service was held in the temple on the last day of Tabernacles. Priests
drew water from the Pool of Siloam and poured it out at the altar of sacrifice
where the 70 bulls for the nations had been offered. The water ran out the temple gate, into
the Kidron valley and through the Judean desert toward the Dead Sea.
It
was said in the second temple period: ‘He that has not seen the joy of drawing
(and the pouring) of the water, has not seen joy in this life.’
In John 7, when
Jesus attends the Festival of Tabernacles, we are told: ‘On the last day of the
festival, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, “If anyone thirsts, let
him come to me and drink… Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said,
‘Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water’.”’
John explains that the ‘living water’ which will flow out of his people is the
Holy Spirit. But where in the Old
Testament is there a ‘Scripture’ that says ‘rivers of living water’ will flow
from the heart of those who believe in the Messiah? No Scripture that says that,
so what does Jesus mean?
It will help us
if we remember that in Ephesians 2, 1 Corinthians 6 and 1 Peter 2, Messiah’s
people are called his new, spiritual temple.
In Ezekiel 40-48, the prophet sees a vision of a glorious future Jerusalem complete with temple. In chapter 47, he sees a river of life-giving water flowing from the
gate of that temple. As the river flows through the desert, it refreshes the
land and causes trees to grow in abundance. Could Ezekiel’s vision be a picture
of Messiah’s spiritual temple?
John’s vision of
the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21 & 22 is a parallel passage. John sees a New
Jerusalem, from which life-giving water flows and he tells us that the New
Jerusalem is the bride of the Lamb. In Ezekiel’s vision, trees grow in the
desert but on either side of John’s river, the Tree of Life from the Garden of
Eden grows. In the book of Revelation, the entire earth has returned to the perfection of
Eden. But Eden in Revelation is even better than the original. It is filling
the earth and instead of just one Tree
of Life, there is a whole harvest of them and their leaves bring healing to the nations!
Is this not what
Jesus had in mind when he spoke of living water flowing out of the hearts of
his people, his living temple? Since he ascended to heaven and poured out his
Spirit, life-giving water has been bringing new life to the nations. In
Ezekiel’s vision, the river of life starts as a trickle from Jerusalem but
becomes a great river bring life to the desert. The river of life began flowing
as a trickle from the apostles in the temple on the Day of Pentecost. Since
then the life-giving water of the Spirit has become a great river that is
bringing life to all nations. Christians are called to bring life to the world
and that river continues to flow from us.
5.
Tabernacles is the Final
Festival
The three great pilgrim festivals of Passover, Pentecost
and Tabernacles, set before us a single picture of God’s Messianic Harvest programme for the world.
According to Leviticus
23:10,11, on the day after the Sabbath at Passover, the people were to bring the
sheaf of the firstfruits of their harvest to the priest. The priest waved
it before the LORD and the one who offered the sheaf was
accepted before God.
At the Passover
on which Jesus was crucified, on the very day that the first sheaf of the
harvest was waved before God, Jesus rose from the grave. In 1 Corinthians 15:20,
Paul describes Jesus as ‘the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep’. The
first sheaf of the barley harvest was a picture of the resurrection of Jesus.
Just as the sheaf of the firstfruits was offered as the guarantee of a full
harvest, the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee of our resurrection.
After the Passover Sabbath,
the people had to count fifty days to
the day of Pentecost. On that day they presented two loaves of bread at the temple as firstfruits of the wheat harvest.
The Holy Spirit
was poured out on the day of Pentecost, the very day on which the two ‘firstfruit’
loaves were lifted before God in the temple. On the day of Pentecost, like all
religious Jews, the 120 disciples would have been present in the temple when the Holy
Spirit fell on them. In the very temple where the two loaves were offered to
God, the 3,000 Jewish souls who believed Peter’s message were presented to God
and the Lamb as the ‘firstfruits’ of a coming world-wide harvest of souls.
Five months
later came the final harvest of the Jewish year, the Festival of Tabernacles.
The firstfruits at Passover related to Israel, as did the two loaves presented at Pentecost (Jews
and Gentile proselytes to Judaism were converted on the Day of Pentecost) but
the final harvest at Tabernacles
anticipated a gathering of not just Israel but all nations into the kingdom of God.
But the harvest
of the nations will also affect Israel because Paul recognises in Romans 9-11 that
something has gone wrong as far as Israel’s salvation is concerned. From the
Tanakh (the Old Testament), we might imagine that after ‘all Israel’ was saved, the nations
would be saved. But that has not been the case. Nevertheless, God still loves
Israel and will be true to his purpose to save the nation he calls his
‘firstfruits’ and his ‘firstborn’.
Paul tells us in
Romans 11 that God is using the Gentiles to make Israel jealous and that the ‘the
fullness of the Gentiles’ will be the way God will save ‘all Israel.’
The gospel is to
the Jew first, not the Jew only. By evangelising the Jewish people
we help to bring about the salvation of the nations. Christian Witness to
Israel is working to bring that great day. Pray for us and
help us to ‘provoke the Jewish people to jealousy’ and thus bring about the salvation of Israel
and the nations.
