Tabernacles (Booths)

The Festival of Tabernacles

The Festival of Harvest

The Festival of Tabernacles (or Booths in some Bible translations) is also called the Festival of Ingathering. It is the complete harvest festival and thus the climax of God's purposes.

A farmer's work is worth absolutely nothing if he doesn't have a harvest. He contemplates his growing crops with pleasure because he knows that when harvest time comes he will have fields full of food. Without the harvest, all the labour of sowing and watering and removing weeds would be a complete waste of time. So it is with God, whom Jesus described as the Farmer. People who do not believe in a harvest have difficulty in understanding God's purposes. Nothing seems to make any sense.

This is so in our personal lives. Many things happen that we cannot understand. They seem like unnecessary frustration and suffering. When the fruit has not yet come there is nothing in which to take pleasure. When our personal time of harvest comes, all will be different. We will rejoice with great joy as we understand the purpose of the trials we have been through.

The same is true at the wider level of the church. We look at God's people now and we see much confusion. Partly this is in fulfilment of Jesus' words, 'Let both (the wheat and the weeds) grow together until the harvest. At that time I will tell the harvesters: First collect the weeds and tie them in bundles to be burned; then gather the wheat and bring it into my barn (Mat 13:30). All too often when the Lord's people assemble believer and unbeliever sit side by side. We ourselves also are too often a mixture of faith and unbelief.

At the still wider level of the world at large, we see even more confusion. Many unbelievers will point to the bloodshed, famine and distress and question whether there can be any God. Again we may say that God's purposes and plans will all be hidden until the harvest. The time will come when according to Zechariah (14:16) even the gentiles will go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord Almighty, and to celebrate the Festival of Tabernacles. 'The creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God' (Romans 8: 21).

The Festival of Perfection

The Festival of Tabernacles is the seventh festival, and it occurred in the seventh month. It lasted also for seven days, (though an eighth was added onto the end for a solemn assembly). Thus it is heavily marked with the number seven, which is the number of spiritual completeness and perfection. It is the fullness of the harvest of which Pentecost was the beginning. We must see it therefore as representing the perfection of our spiritual experience in Jesus.

Each festival is a time of rest or sabbath. The seventh festival is therefore the sabbath of sabbaths or the festival of festivals. Just as the Holy of Holies was holy even compared with the holy place, so the Festival of Tabernacles is a festival even when compared with other festivals.

Compared with it they are like ordinary times.

Each festival is announced by the blowing of trumpets. So important is the Festival of Tabernacles that its blowing of trumpets is a separate festival in its own rights.

A king of kings is a king even when among kings. A Lord of lords is a lord even when among lords. A jubilee of jubilees as we have seen was quite exceptional even among jubilees. So the glory of the Festival of Tabernacles will make the glory of the other festivals seem pale in comparison. From this we may see that we are moving on towards the grand climax of God's purposes. God is not fighting a losing battle in struggling to restore the church to its original purity against competition from materialism, modernism, communism, and other religions. He is moving forward to something that is much greater than all that has gone before.

Here we must compare the Festival of Tabernacles to the Passover. At the Passover the Jews remembered their time in Egypt. They had been slaves to the Egyptians and through Moses God set them free and made them an independent people. They were contrasting freedom with slavery. At Tabernacles they remembered their time in the desert. In the promised land the Israelites lived in houses, owned land and had a regular supply of food. In the desert things were very different.

They moved from place to place as nomads and depended on God for the manna that he sent them from heaven. Which was better? Was it better to live in the desert and feed on manna sent from heaven? Or was it better to live in the fertile land of Israel, given to them by God, and live on its bounty? We can only give one answer. It is better to live in the promised land.

The miracles of the desert, the thunder of Sinai, the water gushing from the rock, the manna and the quails were wonderful provisions from God. It was a unique privilege to see and experience them. However they were a temporary provision for a passing time. Everything was far better than their bitter time of slavery in Egypt, but still the desert was not what God planned for his people. It was a place through which they had to pass.

When the Israelites reached the promised land the manna from heaven ceased. The time of miracles in the desert was over. What is there in spiritual experience that corresponds to this? What is there in the New Testament that we are told will cease?

'Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see obscurely in a mirror, but then face to face' (1 Corinthians 13:8-12).

Paul clearly says that when perfection comes, the gifts of the spirit (tongues, knowledge and prophecy) will pass away. Gifts of the spirit are like sudden inspirations that lift us temporarily out of our spiritual poverty into the realm of God. They are like spikes in an electricity supply when the voltage momentarily shoots up far above its normal level and then quickly comes down again. In Jesus this never happened. It was not necessary. He lived in God.

Those precious gifts of the spirit are not God's best. They are a gracious provision for those who are immature and have not yet the mind of Christ dwelling in them.

When Paul said, 'Now we see obscurely (Greek: en ainigmati - in an enigma) in a mirror, but then face to face', he must have been thinking of God's words about Moses. 'When a prophet of the Lord is among you, I reveal myself to him in visions, I speak to him in dreams. But this is not true of my servant Moses; he is faithful in all my house. With him I speak face to face, clearly and not in riddles' (Numbers 12: 6-8).

Moses had moved on from the inspirational gifts of the spirit into a deeper knowledge and experience of God. When Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians, it appears that he knew he had not reached the place with God which Moses did. It was certainly one of his earlier letters and twenty years later he might well have written something different.

What he wrote to the Philippians from prison was similar: 'Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining towards what is ahead, I press on towards the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus' (Phil 3:12-14).

Some people may think it approaches blasphemy to suggest that we can go further in spiritual experience than Paul. But we must ask, are Bible characters perfect? Did they know everything? Did they make the all-time spiritual records that can never be beaten? God is a God of growth and progress. Paul himself was dramatically converted on the road to Damascus. That experience was the start of a walk with God.

From that day he grew in wisdom and understanding and knowledge of God. More than that he grew in love and joy and peace. We can trace this growth through the book of Acts and then on through his letters. He grew to be a great and wonderful man of God who served his generation and then millions more through the letters he wrote. Still God is a God of growth and progress and unfolding revelation. It is only logical to believe that there will be saints in times to come who go further than Paul. This is not blasphemy, but simple common sense. I believe that Jesus is the only character in the Bible who made the all-time record for an unsurpassable life of continuous and perfect communion with God.

Pentecost is the realm of gifts and signs. It comes at the beginning of the summer. Gifts are very different from fruit. Gifts are instantaneously given. Fruit takes a long time to mature and ripen. It reaches perfection only after enduring the summer's heat. Signs are never of value in themselves. Their value is in what they point to. They are signs that the full fruit will come. We must endure the heat of the summer that is necessary for the ripening of the fruit.

Tabernacles

At the Festival of Tabernacles the two themes of harvest and national remembrance unite. It was celebrated for seven days 'after you have gathered the produce of your threshing-floor and your winepress' (Deut 16:13). The work of harvest was over, and it was time for celebration. The method of celebration (still observed in a modified form by Jews today) was unusual. God told the Jews to take branches from palm trees and poplar trees and make shelters in which they were to live for seven days. They did this to remind themselves that for forty years they lived in tents while they wandered in the desert.

The word tabernacle means a temporary dwelling rather like a tent. In scripture it is used as a picture of the human body, reflecting the shortness of our time in this world. Paul refers to our earthly bodies as tabernacles. John states, 'The word was made flesh and tabernacled among (or in) us.

'Jesus came to take up temporary residence in a human body. There is strong evidence to show that he was actually born at the Festival of Tabernacles. All of this indicates that the glories of the Festival of Tabernacles are to be fulfilled in this life. God will dwell in his people while they are still in their mortal bodies. This festival does not speak of glories in a future heaven, but of what will take place here on earth. Our future state after we leave these mortal bodies will certainly be wonderful far beyond our present imagination, but the Festival of Tabernacles speaks of glories that are for those who enter the fullness of sonship while still in their fleshly bodies.

Soon before his death Jesus told the disciples that he and his Father would come to them and make their dwelling in them. The ultimate experience in God is that he should dwell in us and we in him. This is a total oneness as when two liquids mix and lose their identity in each other. They can no longer be distinguished. When you put milk in tea, is the milk in the tea or the tea in the milk? You cannot say because they are completely lost in each other. That's how it will be with Jesus and us. When people see us they will see him.

Living Water

The Festival of Tabernacles is mentioned just once in the new testament in John chapter 7. At the beginning of that chapter Jesus refused to go up to Jerusalem for the festival in spite of pressure from his brothers, telling them that the time had not yet come. Half way through the festival he appeared in Jerusalem, and on the last and greatest day of the festival, he made this amazing proclamation, 'If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from his inner being.'

Jesus speaks of a source of life located right inside us. This is the direct consequence of him indwelling us. No longer will we need to take people to some other source for their blessing. How often have we pointed people to meetings and conferences and places and books and tapes from which they may receive spiritual life. Alas, the source of life in us was insufficient for their needs.

In the early stages of our walk with God, we are like the moon. We reflect a glory that is not ours. We pass on the light of the sun, as we have no real light of our own. Moonlight is better than no light at all, but it is nothing compared with the full clear light of the sun. The sun has its own light, and gives out warmth and healing as well.

Jesus spoke of rivers of living water flowing. Flowing is something that happens all the time. Rivers flow night and day continuously and never stop. Flowing is an inbuilt part of their nature. I believe there was a continuous unbroken flow of living water from Jesus to all around him who were in any way capable of receiving it. That is his promise to those who follow him to the Festival of Tabernacles.

When this river of water of life flows out in full strength from the sons of God, John's vision of the river of life in the last chapter of Revelation will be fulfilled. The time will have come for the healing of the nations.

Conclusion

We have viewed the seven festivals that God gave to Israel through his servant Moses in consecutive order as separate experiences through which we must pass. That is partly true, but not wholly. The larger the building, the firmer its base must be. As we continue our walk with God, our foundation will not remain static, but will grow stronger and stronger. We will never outgrow the Passover. We will continue to grow in depth of understanding and wonder in the knowledge that we are redeemed and belong to God. Pentecostal gifts, rather than having disappeared, will have been consolidated into a continuous experience of God.

We must press on in the knowledge that the greater glories and manifestations of God lie ahead. We must not strive to recreate the glories of the past. We must not even cling to the good things of the present. We must let go of the good that we may receive the better and the best. We must press on, as Paul did, to receive the prize of the high calling of God in Jesus Christ. Further Reading

I owe a debt to George Warnock whose book "The Feast of Tabernacles" written in the 1950s is now available online. His book opened my eyes to this subject. I strongly recommend it.

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