The Feast of Tabernacles: A Picture of God’s Only Son
If people even entertain that there’s going to be a final harvest of souls, wouldn’t you want to be counted in it? I mean, that’s the logical person. Even if you’re not, see, people, say, “Well, I’m not religious, or I’m, I’m,” but then figure it out. By the way, I’m not a person who says, “Be religious.” I have been the person that said, “Build your relationship with Christ; get to know Him.” You don’t need a middle person. Somebody like me is; I’m only here to open up, to tie the dots, sometimes to, most of the time it’s translation, but no one comes between you and Christ.
That’s your relationship to develop. ♪ ♪ We have been studying the Old Testament, basically the Tabernacle. We started with looking at the structure, we moved into looking at the furniture. After that, we’ve been looking at the set times. For example, last week we looked at the Day of Atonement or Yom Kippur. So we are at the seventh and final set time which is called the Feast of Tabernacles or the Hebrew word is Sukkoth. And this feast is probably mentioned throughout Scripture, both in the Old and New Testaments, probably more than any other. And it’s kind of interesting because it seems like a lot of these set times occur in this window between September and October in the month of Tishri. And they are all kind of commemorative into something. This one, for example, is commemorating the 40 years of wilderness wandering by basically they would, the folks would move out of their houses for approximately a week. They would build a temporary structure made with branches and boughs and all kinds of things that would be a covering.
And this is going to be a little bit weird when I say this, but in terms of making a connection to something we celebrate, this may be the closest thing to Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was something that started here. The pilgrims in gratitude basically for making it here alive, surviving the harsh winters and I think I’ve told you coming over Psalm 18 was the banner for most who came ashore because it’s a psalm of Thanksgiving.
Well, Psalm 18 or Psalms 113 through 118 would be part of this time of year, reading and singing and rejoicing in those psalms but the reason why I say it looks like Thanksgiving a little bit is this would be also, you’ve got the Festival of Booths or Sukkoth, but you’ve also got something else that is being celebrated and that is the ingathering. So crops had been harvested and you would almost have a great bounty of food to enjoy. So kind of think about that September/October time; our Thanksgiving’s November, but it’s probably the most parallel in that respect, a harvest festival.
The day would start, the seventh month of the fifteenth day of Tishri which is equivalent, as I said, to our September/October. It lasted for seven days and the first day of this Feast of Tabernacles and the day after were holy convocations, an assembly of people gathered. You were to do no servile work, no work at all and it was also usually a Sabbath. And these are noteworthy pieces of information because when you start reading the New Testament and you encounter━what we will do━and you encounter Jesus at this time, there are a lot of things that will almost come together if you didn’t know that this had a, basically a Sabbath ending or holy convocation Sabbath ending, it would tell you why the Pharisees reacted to Jesus in a certain way that they used that. They were looking for any excuse but they used that one basically to go after Him.
So, if we are looking at instructions, in Leviticus 23, verses 33 and 34, it kind of gives you just a short, you know, “The LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, The fifteenth day of this seventh month shall be the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the LORD. On the first day shall be a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. Seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: on the eighth day shall be a holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: it is a solemn assembly; ye shall do no servile work therein.” So, that’s one.
Numbers 29 tells us about the daily sacrifices, starting in verse 12. And I am going to take the time to read them because I want you to see even though it’s kind of a little bit boring, I want you to see something. You know, God was very specific in giving instructions, “You’ll do this, you’ll offer that, this is how much, when.” So Numbers 29 verse 12, “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month ye shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no servile work, and ye shall keep a feast unto the LORD seven days: and ye shall offer a burnt offering, a sacrifice made by fire, of a sweet savor unto the LORD,” and here we go, “thirteen young bullocks, two rams, fourteen lambs of the first year; they shall be without blemish: and their meat offering shall be of flour,” remember we went through the offerings, so if you’re not; if you don’t remember, go back and reread why and what they represent, “their meat offering shall be of flour mingled with oil, three-tenths deal unto every bullock and of the thirteen bullocks, two-tenths deal to each ram of the two rams, and a several tenth deals to each lamb of the fourteen lambs.” Now you’re going to see as the days go through this particular set time, there’s one less bull every day being offered.
But if you keep reading, for example, they’re numbered. So for example, verse 17, “On the second day you shall offer twelve young bullocks.” So remember the first one we had 13. That’s in verse 13, 13 young bullocks. Here, second, verse 17, “On the second day you shall offer twelve young bullocks,” “And on the third day,” verse 20, “eleven,” so you can see the numbers decreasing. But if you count up, and this is the thing, it’s a little bit weird, you’re either going to end up with 203 or 215 sacrifices depending on how you’re counting it. And that is aside from; so 215 offerings and sacrifices, aside from the daily regular offerings and sacrifices that would have been offered. That is a lot of sacrificing and offering. I just kind of put that in there. It’s not really that important that you should learn all these details, but what does matter, and I’ll just say this now because I’ve referred to it now for the last few weeks, is that the book of Zechariah says that God basically at the return of Christ, and during that time, people will come to the mount, a nation shall be born in a day.
And it says clearly that the people will be forced to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. So don’t just think of this as something old, antiquated, and not part of our future because, this book tells you that in the future; Zechariah says that, they will be forced to celebrate and keep the Feast of Tabernacles, which ties into something actually, we’ll call it the law of double or triple fulfillment. So let me just say this, you’ll probably hear me repeat it through this message.
Tabernacles itself, moving out of your permanent abode and living in this temporary structure, is not just a reminder of Israel’s wanderings. It is a picture of God’s only begotten Son taking up what John says, “He tabernacled in a tent of human flesh,” and that flesh could not be permanent because all of the sins were laid upon Him and that body had to ascend and go into heaven. So all that was laid upon Him could not have been carried into the heavens, so be very careful when you analyze or parse this. But Christ tented or tabernacled temporarily in a tent of human flesh, so Tabernacles has that dimension attached to it as a first type of fulfillment. A second type of fulfillment is when it says that all these people will have to come to the Mount; that is the final chapter of Zechariah, pointing to a future time when they will have to keep and celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles.
Imagine that if a nation is born in one day and people are streaming to worship at that Mount, they will have no choice but to live in temporary dwellings. They will not be able to have permanent abodes. And there’s more to this feast than just the temporary dwellings, and I’ll get to that in a minute because it’s quite fascinating actually. There’s also a rule or a law, if you will, about this particular celebration falling on a sabbatical year. That is in Deuteronomy 31, and I’ll read it to you just so you can have the details.
This, it’s as many details as you want. I’m not trying to drive you crazy here, but Deuteronomy 31:10, “Moses commanded them, saying, At the end of every seven years, in the solemnity of the year of release, in the Feast of Tabernacles, when all Israel comes to appear before the LORD thy God in the place which he shall choose, thou shalt read this law before all Israel in their hearing. Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, that they may learn and fear the LORD your God and observe to do all the words of this law: and that their children, which have not known anything, may hear, and learn to fear the LORD your God, as long as ye live in the land whither you go over Jordan to possess it.” So you’ve got some regulations therefore if this happens to fall in a sabbatical year. So that’s kind of giving you the details more or less, an outline.
I don’t want to get bogged down on that. Equally, because there were so many offerings being offered, and now I’m going to, I’m going to just shift this like I did last week, two temple times because it’s much easier to talk about details in this festive time at the tabernacle versus at any other time; I’m sorry, at the temple because we have enough information or more information. So what we would see on this particular day, and this again, this ties into all these small details, we would see all of the courses of the priests, all 24 courses, would participate in this time.
It’s kind of radical for another reason, and I’ll tell you why. The priesthood all in its full glory in participation; think of now pointing to a future time, they’ll, just like God was speaking in the book of Revelation to John saying about the hundred and forty-four preachers of righteousness, these 24 courses of the priesthood, if you will, will need to be present at that time. So there will probably be a reinstitution of some form of the priesthood, as we read it, some form, and these 24 courses will be present at that time as well.
It’s kind of; it’s all tied together. You can’t just go, “Okay, this is Old and this is New and we, the twain shall never meet.” No, they’re actually, you read them together and you see the big picture coming together of what exactly that’s going to be like in the future. Also, I reference this because it touches on three of the major feasts. This is one that all males of a certain age were required to go to Jerusalem, the three feasts, this is one of them, and God says in Deuteronomy 16:16 to not appear before Him empty-handed.
So the men that came to Jerusalem to celebrate these three feasts also would need to come with something in hand, an offering of some kind to the Lord. These set times, all, as I said, there’s a cluster of them and this particular set time, the Feast of Tabernacles marks a change in season. And this kind of dovetails into the other things we don’t talk about regarding the Feast of Tabernacles. So for these people of the book, biblical times, extremely important, mark the time of sowing and harvesting. It also marked a time; this particular time of year would usher in what would be analogous to their winter and a rainy season, minimally, if not snow. And I know people, again, tend to think of the Holy Land and they never think of it, it’s like the song, “It Never Rains in Southern California,” which is a lie.
I don’t know why people think it never snows in the Holy Land. Hello. But anyway, let’s, let’s go back to that at a different time. And the climate people will be raising their fists at me, all right. So, we understand due to the nature of the time we’re dealing with people depending on their crops and specifically one particular thing: rain. So this particular time would usher in, as I said, the winter/rainy season, but it didn’t always guarantee rain. So there was this, we’ll call it prayer for water, for rain, to bless the crops for the next year.
And two things don’t seem to go together, moving out into temporary booths for seven days and praying for rain. It doesn’t seem like they go well together, right? But that’s what they did. So by temple time, I want you to imagine what the scene would have been like. So I want you to think if you could even imagine looking at an aerial view and imagining it would be like looking at thousands, thousands, and thousands of ants moving around, hustling and bustling because they had to move out of their houses and build temporary structures. But then remember, this is a feast where people must come to Jerusalem, right? It’s a pilgrimage feast. So it means the streets anywhere where you could place your temporary dwelling, would be crowded. And people would be essentially racing on, the night of the fourteenth of Tishri to finish their structure.
So the scene there would have been kind of a little bit chaotic. And I’m imagining if we had we could fly a drone back then to see what it looked like, you’d see all of these people just moving around frantically to get their structures set up. And they had to do it before the priest would sound the horn that let them know that the feast had started. So it’s almost like, “On your mark, get set!” I don’t know about you, but I would not want to be building my structure under that much pressure, especially if rain’s coming. I’m not, you know, no. But, so we could focus on the rain part. But what is interesting is, you know, how holidays have morphed. I explained this to you. A lot of things were added in by human imagination. So there was something added to this holiday that gave way to something called “the water libation,” the offering, the collecting, and the offering of water.
And so what you would see during this time, and I’m now looking at, as I said, temple times, what you would see is the high priest who would take a golden pitcher. And I just, again, I’m going to try and paint the picture. You almost have to picture a bustling, very excited crowd following the high priest as he took his pitcher down to the pool of Siloam and probably collected no more than maybe a quart of water.
And the procession that went around him, singing, and they would of course be reciting Psalms 113-118 by heart. Nobody is carrying around a scroll, all right? It’s all by memory. Imagine the instruments and the kind of chaotic noise. I don’t, I don’t envision that the music was, in my, I don’t know, in my imagination, the music’s not pleasing. It’s probably very irritating with people blowing something that probably sounds like a very off-key recorder or a flute, something that’s irritating; people singing, tambourines, clapping, and whatnot, accompanying the priest as he would return to the temple area. And so this whole entourage followed him to the pool of Siloam to collect the water, followed him back to the temple, as he went through the water gate, entered into the southern gate, and the silver trumpets would be blown three times.
Remember, we covered the silver trumpets. And the words of Isaiah 12:3 would be recited. I’ll read them to you, “Therefore with joy, you shall draw water out of the wells of salvation.” And the high priest would take the pitcher of water that he collected and pour it into one of two silver basins. The other silver basin would be for the wine/drink offering libation. I don’t, I’m not quite sure what the category is for that, but there would be two basins. And then you would have the three blasts that would sound from the trumpets, the people reciting, singing, all kinds of clamoring, thanksgiving would fill the air. And essentially that, the act, the ceremony of pouring the water was essentially like saying to God, “Okay, we’re ready for You to open up the skies and pour us out a blessing so that we can have food for the next year.” We tend to take this very much for granted.
But, you know, we can, because you can always go to the store, right? Go to the store where you need a bag of potatoes, you need a bottle of milk, or whatever. But think of this, if your whole life depends on the crop yielding, you’re going to be hoping, you’re going to be doing everything you can and hoping and praying that God does let the rain go. Otherwise, you’re not going to have food. So, you know, we tend to not connect these dots, but it’s important to get in the same mindset as what these people would have had to go through. Now, let’s park that here for a minute. You would also see these priests, many of them waving branches and boughs, sometimes they were palm branches, but they would be waving them almost like in excitement, like, you know, it’s like stirring up the air, right? It’s kind of waving to everybody.
Again, I imagine the scene being really beautiful, but I’ve also been, I’ve told you, I’ve been to churches where people think it’s their job to stir up the air. All right, now let me start making some connections here. So, turn, if you will, if you’d like to, with me to the New Testament, Matthew 21. So, I want to start showing you, we’re making connections to how this applies in both the realized time of Christ’s time and future fulfillment. So, in Matthew 21, very early on, we have Jesus entering Jerusalem and if you remember, you’ve got all of these people that are thronged around Him and they’re screaming. The multitudes went before and followed and cried, “Hosanna to the son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna,” which is basically “save now,” “in the highest.” But this scene is also told in Luke, I believe, and in John, and you’ve got the scene of them basically with the palm leaves, waving branches, and whatnot.
So, I think it’s interesting, also mind-boggling, that when you start looking at, you know, traditions that might have been implemented, morphed through time because now the same; we have the King entering Jerusalem, but they’re, some are saying it in mocking and some are saying it in truth, but most probably in mocking regarding Jesus. When He comes again, trust me, there will not be anyone laughing.
That’s, see, that’s the wonderful thing about God’s book is God gets to have the last laugh, okay, while people ridiculed and they made fun and whatever they did to Him. God will get to have the last laugh. And I, I’m not saying that’s going to be funny either because it won’t be. It’s a very serious time, but I think it’s, it’s mind-boggling. Here we have Jesus entering and the scene, which I imagine is kind of the, we’ll call it the mockery version of what will be when He comes back and you’ve got a whole processional around Him.
I just think that there’s, there’s a connection there to that, and also the other thing that we read of in Revelation 7, which is we see all of these people dancing around the throne. They have, some type of branches in their hands as well, singing and praising Him. So I think this time, this set time is very pivotal and when people talk about the Lord’s return, this is a very important time and it’s very important for us to understand; just don’t read this as simply Old Testament. We’re looking at what happened in the New and what will happen at a future time. Now, the second evening━I’m not done in the New Testament, but we’ll just take a little break there. On the second evening of the Feast of Tabernacles, people gathered in the court of the women. And that’s very important too.
This gives us some clarity about the way things were done. So you have all these people gathered in the court of the women, which traditionally was cordoned off and segregated for women only because that’s how worship practices were done. The men and the women were kept separate, but on this particular night of celebration, they would lift the partition and the partition lifted would reveal four very large menorahs, and these menorahs or candlesticks would be lit. Now I want you, again, imagine. I want to try and paint the picture. Imagine if you were a pilgrim coming from afar, going towards the epicenter of Jerusalem, pitch dark, and all you can see is the center of the city is aglow because those candelabras would have lit up everything.
You would have seen the glowing-ness, then of course you probably have small fires here and there for people who are encamped (and hopefully they practiced tabernacle safety; never mind). But my point is you could see what the imagery was if you could only imagine. You know, sometimes, I’m sure all of us have seen pictures of our mountains here on fire at nighttime and the sky is glowing with the orange and all the colors of the fire. Imagine coming in as a pilgrim and seeing the glow of the city, the bustling of the people. It had to be quite a scene. But then you have something else that happens. So this partition is lifted.
These four menorahs or candlesticks are in the inner court. And then you’ve got all of these Levites now that make their way through a passage and they descend on the stairwell through the court of the Israelites down to the court of the women on these stairs. So it must have been a big, we’ll call it very ritualistic procession that occurred. And the sound of psalms and singing, the psalms I referenced again, 113-18 would be just flowing through the structure, and the temple would have been filled with music and reveling.
This would be repeated every single night. And then now let me give you some thoughts here because it’s really, I’ve just painted a picture and that’s all good and well. But if you know your Bible, you know that Ezekiel, the prophet Ezekiel, describes the glory of God leaving the temple. Do you remember that? Okay. And then we have the picture of the return and that’s at a future time. Now remember that fire is always synonymous with God’s presence. Remember the burning bush, the bush that burned, that was not consumed, “Take off your shoes, Moses.
The place where you stand is holy ground.” It was only holy because, or hallowed because God was there; fire, the symbol of God’s presence. These people were celebrating this celebration. Guess what was missing? God’s presence. You’ve got to light the fire to have them, we’ll call it the essence. I’m not saying God was not present as in, He can’t look down and see, but as the Shekinah glory that once filled the temple and the fire that represented God was not there.
They had to create this. And I don’t think that they did this to replace or create or even, maybe they weren’t even cognizant. When I was reading and studying and seeing all the different procedures, it resonated with me that this is very much like how to, how to make it as though, it’s like putting fake fruit, hanging plastic fruit on real tree branches, and saying, “Look, there’s fruit growing.” It’s kind of like that. God maybe was watching, but His Shekinah certainly was not there. And as I said, if you are kind of putting this all together, you start to see that this festival of light and water, these two things are going to bring you not just the tabernacle, the set time itself, but water and light are also going to bring you to Christ. And I’m about to show you that right now.
So we’re still in New Testament, if you didn’t go too far away, turn to John 7 with me. So John 7 tells us that it was the time of the Feast of Tabernacles. Jesus was returning to the temple when the religious Pharisees, of course, were always trying to, you know, trip Him up, but they tried here. So if you just read the opening, if you have a Bible like mine, it says, “Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles.” But if you start reading the chapter, “After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry because the Jews sought to kill him. Now the Jews’ Feast of Tabernacles was at hand. His brethren, therefore, said unto him, Depart hence, and go into Judaea, that thy disciples also may see the works that thou doest.” And if you keep reading this, you’re going to see that there is a whole exchange going on.
“The Jews sought him at the feast,” that’s verse 11, saying, “Where is he?” Much murmuring. So we know that this is kind of the setup if you will. And then something interesting happens. So if you keep reading through this, because that sets up, the tone for everything. But you have two things that are going to happen within this chapter. One of them occurs in; it’s still in chapter 7 beginning in verse 37 when Jesus talks about the, living water, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” And so I need to kind of clarify this now because there’s a lot of pieces of information, and if you’re not if you can’t connect the dots, it’ll be hard to follow along. So remember I just talked to you about the water libation and the pouring out of the water that became part of the Feast of Tabernacles. And here we have the One who can give the water of life speaking, and it’s during this time.
He goes on to heal a man in chapter 9 that was born blind. And it is at this moment in this reference, if you read and you put this all together, the healing of the man born blind would have been on the eighth day. And why that’s important, when did I say the eighth day would have been? A Sabbath; see, otherwise you just read stuff and it’s like, “Oh, okay, what’s the big deal about that?” Right? So Jesus heals the man, and what is said, obviously Jesus speaks and He says, “I am come into this world, that they which see not might see.” And then of course we have the whole reference to Jesus being the light of the world. So we have two references that, because of the time they’re happening, they would almost see, there are dots we can’t connect because we don’t necessarily know the minutia of their celebrations.
But imagine if you knew about the pouring out of the water and the libation and the prayers for water, for the rain to be blessed by water, and the light that they lit, you’d see clearly that━this is happening at Tabernacle time, this passage we’re looking at from chapters 7 at least through 9 are occurring in this space of time. If you were one of these religious people and you were sitting back and you heard Jesus either, A) referring to Himself as saying, “Out of Me come the living waters,” or “I am the light of the world,” you would have taken that possibly in several different ways, not just the statement itself as blasphemy, but imagine in the backdrop of all the temple celebrations you would have, if you were a religious person and well versed, you would have said, “How dare He? He’s saying He’s the water when we are the ones who pour out the water, and we bless you with the water.
And He says He’s the light, but we light the fires.” Do you see what I’m saying? This all occurred during this time. So why I think this is important is that they were up in arms, by the way, if you read this whole passage on Jesus healing the man, the whole thing was you’re not to do any servile work. Now listen, they didn’t acknowledge Him as the Son of God, but if God is God, God can do whatever He wants. He can heal, He can not heal, He can━whatever He wants. But I find it interesting because it’s the mindset of these people that they’d prefer to let somebody, an animal, or a human being suffer than for the person to be healed and not celebrate that healing. So they thought; they sought to kill Him because He did this on the Sabbath, amongst other things, as most of us know. So you start tying this together, and as I said, it becomes very interesting to me. So the temple needed to have, we’ll call it, artificial light for it to become full of joy and festivities.
This temple, your temple, our temple, does not have to have artificial light. It has the true Light. See, these are all the things that you juxtapose and you realize that we could never separate ourselves. You know, not studying these set times, not studying the Tabernacle, you do yourself a disservice because you can see it’s almost like this was so woven into the fabric of what would be unfolded down the road that not knowing all of this substance, you start reading now, go back and you read about starting at the Tabernacles, the Feast of Tabernacles time, and you will see that there are a lot of details in there regarding light and water out of Jesus’ mouth that are pointing you to no, don’t look at the temple.
Don’t look at the shadow. Don’t look at the, what is just for now. Look at who is the permanent source: Christ. So, the seventh day of the feast, unlike the other days where there would have been, as I was referring to what went on inside, three blasts of the silver trumpet, but on this day, on the seventh day, sounds three sets of seven blasts. And I think that’s also interesting, the numbers seven and three. Three, we did the numbers; three is a divine manifestation, and seven, is the number of completion or perfection.
And if you want to put them together in any form, I guess you get 21, last time I checked, don’t call that racist. These numbers are also important. So, what’s not said for us, clearly, in a future time, at the Feast of Tabernacles, as I said, Zachariah spells out that that’s what’s going to happen in the future; not yet happened. I’m also imagining that these sounds will accompany that day. And if you don’t think that they’re somehow connected in the book of Revelation, I’ll let you dig that one out for yourself. They are. It’s very interesting. All right, so, we have some other things that I want to talk about now. And, if you remember, I started by saying, ingathering or harvest time. So, there are enough references to this final chapter on planet Earth, if you want to call it that, the final chapter in terms of biblically speaking, where the final judgment on Earth is viewed as a final harvest.
And if you’ve been listening to me over any amount of time, I’ve repeated some of these Scriptures. Hosea 6:11 says, “He hath set a harvest for thee when I return the captivity of my people.” Joel 3:13 says, “Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe.” And Revelation 14:15 says, “And another angel came out of the temple, crying with a loud voice to him that sat on the cloud,” and said, “Thrust in thy sickle, and reap . . . . for the harvest of the earth is ripe.” So, you know, I have, it’s a rhetorical question, but it is, I think I’ve asked this for the last few weeks. If people even entertain that there’s going to be a final harvest of souls, wouldn’t you want to be counted in it? I mean, that’s the logical person. Even if you’re not, see, people, say, “Well, I’m not religious, or I’m, I’m,” but then figure it out. By the way, I’m not a person who says, “Be religious.” I have been the person that said, “Build your relationship with Christ; get to know Him.” You don’t need a middle person.
Somebody like me is; I’m only here to open up, to tie the dots, sometimes to, most of the time it’s translation, but no one comes between you and Christ. That’s your relationship to develop. So, think about it this way. Somebody lazy, who doesn’t care, that’s the type of relationship you’ll have. Somebody who’s taken it upon themselves to cultivate, develop, get to know. You know, I know people like that. Have you ever met anybody who just, you know, seems like they’re going to be cool people, but they don’t want to take the time to get to know you? They just sit there and they nod their head, or they’ll, if, if you eat food with them, they, they like to dine and dash, but they’re not really, they’re superficial people, right? Well, God’s not interested in superficial people. If that makes any point clear to you, if you’ve got friends like that, recognize you might be a little bit like God when you say, “I don’t like that,” because God doesn’t like it either.
So, I have a quote here. It kind of paints the picture. What is said is, “It shall come to pass, that when the LORD shall beat off from the channel of the river unto the stream of Egypt, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel. It shall come to pass in that day, the great trumpet shall be blown, and they shall come which were ready to perish in the land of Assyria, and the outcasts of the land of Egypt, and ye shall worship the LORD in the holy mount of Jerusalem.” Very interesting, several times over Isaiah says these things, and it’s talking to us about a future time.
This is why I said there’s no place now or tomorrow or next year or in the future for ego and pride in the kingdom. If you don’t know what you don’t know, recognize “I don’t have enough knowledge here.” It’s like; it’s like a survival thing, all right? We have no electricity. We have━you have to be your resources and figure things out. Now, do you wait until the last minute when everything goes wrong, or do you learn some basic skills along the way that will help you? I think that’s a rhetorical no-brainer, right? You’ll learn some basic skills. Otherwise, you’re going to be hoping and praying that you have some very generous neighbors. Never mind. All right, from the prophet Zechariah, he says, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, to keep the feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whichever families of the earth do not come up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, on them there will be no rain.” For those that do not come, I believe that’s not a reference simply to no water, but there will be no blessing upon them by God, ultimately in Christ because they refuse.
They were told they must come up. They must perform this and they will not. Now that’s Zechariah 14:16, 17, 18; something like that. You decide. You can go at your leisure and read that and see what you think that means. But not only does God demand that they come and do as He prescribed, but He also says, “You will come and you will bring offerings.” And this is why, I get a little frustrated with people who seem to think that giving is just an add-on in Christianity. It was never an add-on in the Old and it was never an add-on in the New; it is intrinsic to our existence as believers. Ezekiel 37:27 says something like this, “My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” And that reference is to none other than “my tabernacle” speaking about Christ.
You know, again, if you were reading the Old Testament and you couldn’t put together the symbolism, you might think, “My tabernacle” is in them; that’s the old tabernacle that Moses dragged around, that David dragged around. No, “My tabernacle shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, they shall be,” is speaking and referring to Christ. It goes on to say, “And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, with my sanctuary and I shall be in the midst of them.” Now, if you take that same look and you look at Revelation 21 and I believe it’s verse 3.
And you’ll, you’ll have a similar statement, “I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.” Can you tell me; it’s a yes or no answer, can you tell me that you could read the Old Testament and not by reading the New, seeing that this is like a mirror? They are saying the same thing.
I just read you a passage out of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 37:27 and 28, and Revelation 21:3, they’re saying the same thing. It’s like God was saying to the Old Dispensation, “I’ve revealed Myself,” if you want to call it in a hidden or cryptic way until Christ put on flesh and let us know who He was. So this is why I say it’s, it’s kind of baffling that people would read the Old Testament and not, and not see, “Whoa! That’s Messiah right there, that’s Christ.” The other thing is, as I said, the Feast of Tabernacles, in my opinion, it’s very obvious the relationship and the connection to reveal Christ both in the New Testament as we know Him on the pages, and telling us about what will happen in the future because the pattern of what was established in the past is essentially going to be put out there.
It’s almost like the whole Bible, I’ve said this before, is like bookends. What you had in the beginning, you will have in the end. So we had a tree set up, God said, “All this is yours, but this one tree, don’t touch it.” It’ll be the one tree for the healing of nations. Everything is like a bookend. What they had as perfect unity with God in the beginning and then the fall occurred, in the end we have, we are once more reconciled back with perfect unity. So how could you not look at the Old and say, “That’s where Christ is”? All the minute details, and then you go back into the New and you put them together and you’ve got this incredible portrait that’s not black and white, it is full of color and gives you a deeper understanding. And remember I said, water and light, so let me go back to that for a second because these two things which became part and parcel of the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles. When I just quoted from John 7, Jesus says, “He who believes in me, out of his heart will flow the living water.” And He says that many times about the living water.
Out of, out of you it shall flow, right? You even have, interestingly enough, something that the prophet Jeremiah says that ties all of this together. So bear with me. It’s a little complicated to tie these details together because they’re far away, but when you bring them all together you can see the connection. Jeremiah says, “My people have committed two evils; they have forsaken me the fountain of living waters, and have hewed themselves cisterns, broken cisterns, that hold no water.” So remember, part of this celebration is the pouring out of the water which brings you to Christ.
And Christ says out of Him this, this essential part of life that now flows out of us. We are, we are not empty, broken, hewn-out cisterns pouring water as libation-like work. We have received the Spirit of God. There’s this great connection for this. So Jesus was telling us essentially, Jesus, not me, “I’m the source. I am essentially the river of life out of which all things that you need flow and I shall impart them to you. Do not try and make it for yourself.” Otherwise, you embody what Jeremiah was saying about the people of the Old Testament. They were just that. Now if they had care and concern, I’m going to say this again, would they have grafted onto? God didn’t make the libation of water and God didn’t make the celebration of light.
That belongs to Hanukkah and other festivities. So why did they do this? Was it not enough to sacrifice 203 or 215 animals and to go along with God’s prescribed way of moving out of your house? But these were things that were lacking in the equation that was not, we’ll call, we’ll say, revealed about Christ. So how interesting that man grafts on the water libation and the fire for this particular celebration that God did not institute like this, as if the people were saying, now they’re not saying this, but as if the people were saying, “There’s a little part that was left out about Christ here, except we don’t know what His name is and we don’t know who He is and we won’t say that He’s Messiah because we, we don’t think so.
But we’ll graft these things on,” which are revealing Christ as well. I just think it’s kind of mind-boggling to me. And we must see Christ’s words in proper context when He says out of the individual will flow the rivers or the live water or living water. The same thing is true of the light when Jesus says, “I’ll be, I will give you as a light to the Gentiles,” or “that you may be my salvation to the ends of the earth.” The concept of light and water is permeated through everything that Jesus says. So if you kind of put this all together, it, it paints a picture. And the Feast of Tabernacles, as I’ve said; don’t get me wrong, all of these feasts, set times mark out something. The Passover talks about the sacrifice of Christ. If the children of Egypt were delivered out of Egypt’s bondage and then set free, we are delivered out of the bondage of the world, of sin and the world through Christ our Passover. Or the Day of Atonement, which I spoke on last week, Yom Kippur, which for the children of Israel could only be a covering for the year, yet Christ when He died, my sins, past, present, and future were laid upon Him and they were taken away; they weren’t just covered.
So the Feast of Tabernacles is speaking on some, we’ll call it much deeper level about the work of Christ; not just the work that He did while He was here, but the work that is yet to be done in the final harvest of souls on earth. And the fact that He, throughout the pages, says, “I am light. I am, I am true,” and fill in the blanks because He, He is essentially the source of all, which leads you back, if you want to go back there to creation; He was there too. But my biggest thing here, it’s kind of a tragedy that when He came and told the people essentially, or was revealing in, in part who He was, that they didn’t listen. And again, these people who were steeped in these ceremonies couldn’t look and not be blind, to not see. This is the walking, living fulfillment of what God spoke of, very interesting. So starting at the close of Tabernacles or thereabouts is a celebration that takes you through the reading of the law in a cycle that when you get back the following year, you should have completed all the reading.
If it took you that long, you may be a slow reader. Anyway, I think to bring all of these messages to a close, what I, what I want to say to you is, and the reason why this, all of these set times just speak to me, and they actually kind of, they, in some ways have set a fire inside of me because it’s exciting to see when you start getting into the detail, and these were not exhaustive messages by any means, but when you start getting into, and there’s much more detail, all of these minute details point to Christ.
All of these point to His work, His ministry, and whether it is healing, cleansing, whatever it is, salvation, it’s all there. So when somebody says, “Well, I’d prefer to study the New Testament,” my answer is always going to be this. You must read Old and New together, and you’ll find that, as I’ve said many times, what is put out in the Old Testament may be as not a crystal clear picture, in some cases like the Tabernacle, it’s crystal clear. But God in His mind when He was speaking, when people were writing, there was only one thought at the back of all this, or maybe at the front, and that was Christ. Christ was there all along. You may say, “Well, but, but Christ wasn’t in the flesh yet.” That’s true, and we have many revelations of Christ as a Christophany or a Theophany in appearance, but without the flesh, perhaps as an angelic being or bright and radiant.
But in any case, the most important thing that I can tell you is these set times tell me something so important about the return of our Lord, and that is where I’m just going to take one second, then I’ll be done. See, you could start by saying, “Well, I looked at all the feasts and I studied them, and I can see how they all reflect Christ.” The Feast of Tabernacles, however, paints a little bit different picture so that when you’re reading with caution, and I said, please, in your leisure, read the closing chapters of Zechariah, because it paints the picture of when Jesus’ feet touch down when He returns and His feet touch down on the Mount of Olives, geographically how the land will be changed.
Water that does not flow from underneath the temple will flow from the temple; there, is another symbol of water coming out from the source going, going out from, not coming into. So if somebody says to me, “Well, why should I study this?” Because your future depends on it, because with everything else that is going on in the world where people are contemplating, “Are we heading to World War III? Or what’s going to happen? Will I be broke next week? Or will, whatever political situation”━it doesn’t, I hate to say it, it matters, of course, it matters for our beloved country, for our citizens, for the people who are patriots and love this land.
But in the bigger picture, further removed from this, there is looking ahead to a distant time. No one knows what’s going to happen, the dates, you know, the Bible says, no one knows the exact date of Christ’s return. But He’s coming back and the Feast of Tabernacles, probably above all, Trumpets and Tabernacles tell me we better pay attention. If all the other feasts have been fulfilled in the past and the present as they occurred with possible future fulfillment, some of them yes and some of them not, not completely like Tabernacles, we need to pay attention. That tells me that; people say, “Well, how do I know?” If God’s word has been right and accurate, we’ll say up to 95 percent of━and this is not a crystal ball where you’re predicting, but if God’s word has been right about future events; just think about the unfolding of history as we, one time when we studied the book of Daniel to see the successive kingdoms that had not yet been birthed or collapsed and Daniel paints them as clear as day.
He speaks about people like the spirit or if you want to call it the spirit of Antichrist or the spirit that was in Alexander the Great conquered the then-known world. All of these things that you have to look at and you have to almost step back and say, “Well, if all of that has been fulfilled and this feast is looking for a future time, then my message to people would be, think very carefully about what you do with the time that remains.” And the time that remains could be a year, it could be a hundred years, but whatever that time is, it’s remaining. It’s not like there’s an infinitesimal time in front of us. And I don’t want to be gloom and doom because I say to you with, with great joy, someone who is in Christ, they need not worry; they will be with Him. You have life eternal. You will live with Him forever. This isn’t like, “Oh, let’s click our heels and hope for the best.” It’s what’s been revealed here.
So what I’m saying to you is anybody who’s not redeeming the time right now, I’m not telling you, spend every living hour in this book. I’m not telling you, “Go and live in a cloister somewhere.” I’m not telling you that, but I’m saying, “Make time.” You make time for everything else. You make time to look at your darn phone every day, check your emails, go on social media for whatever five minutes that you do, which probably turns into an hour, then you’ve got time to sit down and at least read a little bit to get to know, because that’s how you get to know God.
You sit down and you study and start reading His book, and maybe you don’t start by studying, you just start by reading. And you read where you can, getting to know the big picture. What was the meaning here? What was the take? What, was it that God was wanting these people to know that He wants me to know? Once those things start taking hold something interesting happens. You start to think of the future radically different. I do not know what’s going to happen next year or next month or even tomorrow, but I know who will be with me. I know who’s going to see me through. And like many of you who’ve seen that picture of the two footprints in the sand, only one person is walking, that’s every one of us. So think about it. It’d be kind of silly to not say, “I’m going to take this time and learn all I can,” because when the time comes, I will, I will recognize.
I will know Him. I will also know who the false prophet is. I will also know who the Antichrist is. I will know and I will recognize these things. And the spirit of the Antichrist, which is already working in the land, I will recognize that too, not as some good thing for the citizens so we can all become better globalists or better communists. But yeah, I know I said it. It’s very hard, you know, to control this mouth and try to censor myself, okay? And if I let loose, you’d probably all be like, “Ooh, I’m going out the door.” But I’m a real person and what you see is what you get in my care. And my concern is for those people who have not yet come to that place; and I’m not an evangelist saying, “If you died today,” I’m not; I don’t do that. I am saying, consider the fact that God was gracious enough for some reason to have you listen today to say, “Maybe I need to take this thing seriously. Maybe I didn’t hear all the other messages she preached, but this one is now telling me I should try and get to know God a little bit more.” And maybe you’re already on that journey.
I don’t know, but if you haven’t started, today is a good day to say, “This could be the first day, not just of the rest of my life, but the first day, literally, of eternity because I started today to get to know the One who will be with me, take care of me, and see me through” I don’t know what else to tell you except these are wonderful messages to learn more about Him and I hope you’ll go back, listen again, and it’s, as always, we come to an end of a series and I kind of feel like, “Huh, now what?” Well, you’ll have to be here next week to find out what that will be. That’s my message. You have been watching me, Pastor Melissa Scott, live from Glendale, California at Faith Center.
If you would like to attend the service with us, Sunday at 11 am, simply call 1-800-338-3030 to receive your pass. If you’d like more teaching and you would like to go straight to our website, the address is www.PastorMelissaScott.com.
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