Feast of Tabernacles explained, pt. 1/2: man’s first Sabbath
From divine perfection to divine perfection.
Leviticus 23 states of the last annual feast:1
And 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 an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: on the eighth day shall be an holy convocation unto you; and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the LORD: it is a solemn assembly; and ye shall do no servile work therein.
The first part of explaining the Feast of Tabernacles will focus on the first sabbath day of rest; the concluding half next week will cover the eighth day.
Just as a refresher in case you forgot from these previous two posts…
…the feast days fundamentally carried a straightforward literal connotation in observance mode during the Mosaic (a.k.a. Old) Covenant which ultimately pointed towards a greater symbolic meaning whose centrality is Jesus Christ. Again, Paul said to the Colossians:2
Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of an holyday, or of the new moon, or of the sabbath days: Which are a shadow of things to come; but the body is of Christ.
This passage is often misconstrued to mean all observation of the feast days has become “optional” or “obsolete” in the antitypical New Covenant, but all he assured to the 1st-century brethren in the church in Colossae was that no vain doctrines of man3 needed to be given any heed to with regard to how their faithful keeping of the feast days was criticized by unbelieving gnostics who corrupted the word of God.4
Now, to understand the Feast of Tabernacles, let’s first understand what the earthly tabernacle pointed to—the prophet Ezekiel said of the promised New Covenant:5
And David my servant shall be king over them; and they all shall have one shepherd: they shall also walk in my judgments, and observe my statutes, and do them. And they shall dwell in the land that I have given unto Jacob my servant, wherein your fathers have dwelt; and they shall dwell therein, even they, and their children, and their children’s children for ever: and my servant David shall be their prince for ever.
Moreover I will make a covenant of peace with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them: and I will place them, and multiply them, and will set my sanctuary in the midst of them for evermore.
My tabernacle also shall be with them: yea, I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And the heathen shall know that I the LORD do sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary shall be in the midst of them for evermore.
The covenant of peace referred to here is the same new covenant spoken of by Jeremiah the Prophet6—the new testament of Jesus Christ’s blood shed for all of humanity.7 The fulfillment therefore is found in Christ, especially the part about the land given to Jacob. It is not an endorsement of colonial earthly land-theft and does NOT refer to an earthly kingdom—Jesus told His disciples that the kingdom of God, a.k.a. the true Zion, is within the faithful believer.8 At the Last Supper after Judas Iscariot departed into the night, the Lord told the faithful eleven:9
In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
Note that Jesus did not say He would come again to establish His kingdom on the earth where His servants would lord it over to rule the heathen—rather, Jesus says that at the Second Coming He would come to deliver His faithful adherents redeemed by His blood into a heavenly Zion built by none other than Himself. In the Apocalypse (Book of Revelation), the New Jerusalem is explicitly described as descending from God out of Heaven.10
In Ezekiel 40-48, the prophet observed God’s holy city set upon a very high mountain.11 That mountain is none other than the mountain of the house of the LORD, a.k.a. the kingdom of God.12 Territorial inheritance for the twelve tribes of Israel (yes, the real Israel, not the modern-day nazijewish terror syndicate blasphemously calling itself this rubbish “State of Israel”), listing cities and locations associated with “Gentile” territories such as Hamath, Damascus et al.—what does this indicate? Very simply, of a harmonious parallel between God’s footstool (earth) and His throne (heaven),13 for the earthly ordained sanctuary and tabernacle was a copy of the heavenly.14
The holy city Ezekiel witnessed could not have been an earthly hyper-literalized kingdom as envisioned by theologically illiterate Nazi-Zionists, for the simple reason that the descriptions listed in Ezekiel 40-48 match those in the Book of Revelation, proving thereby that the holy city the prophet saw was the heavenly Zion not of this sinful world. For instance, the concluding section speaks of twelve gates:
And the gates of the city shall be after the names of the tribes of Israel: three gates northward; one gate of Reuben, one gate of Judah, one gate of Levi. And at the east side four thousand and five hundred: and three gates; and one gate of Joseph, one gate of Benjamin, one gate of Dan. And at the south side four thousand and five hundred measures: and three gates; one gate of Simeon, one gate of Issachar, one gate of Zebulun. At the west side four thousand and five hundred, with their three gates; one gate of Gad, one gate of Asher, one gate of Naphtali.
The Lord’s disciple and emissary John says of twelve gates in the New Jerusalem:15
And had a wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel: On the east three gates; on the north three gates; on the south three gates; and on the west three gates.
Note that the Ezekiel 37 passage spoke of one shepherd—there is no doubt this is the same one shepherd Jesus applied to Himself in John 10:1-18 when He said that other sheep would be ingathered into one fold,16 alluding to the preaching of the gospel that would bring the wayward lost children of Ephraim back into a single unified house of Israel with Judah, completing the Christian church’s fullness. I explained the comprehensive details of that here:
Let us now understand what it means that God’s tabernacle will be with His people—what is that tabernacle exactly? An answer is conveyed in Revelation:17
And I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it. And the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it: for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof.
The true tabernacle is not any ordinarily stationary physical building, but the living eternal God of the universe in whom there is everlasting salvation18 and eternal life.19 As the body of Christ,20 God’s faithful body of believers find their eternal refuge in the tabernacle that is God Himself and none other.
And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.21
Now, why then does the Feast of Tabernacles specifically command sabbath rest on the first and eighth days? Let’s understand what a day could symbolically represent:22
But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day.
Aren’t the holy scriptures ever crisp-clear! Let’s look at Feast of Tabernacles then from the perspective that each day contained therein symbolically represents a thousand years:
day #1 (sabbath rest): the first Sabbath day in the week of creation, when Adam and Eve (after being created on the sixth day of the week) experienced their first full day of pure harmony abiding in Yahweh’s completed rest
days #2-7 (no sabbath rest): the six millennia of human sin on the planet before the Second Advent of Jesus Christ
day #8 (sabbath rest): heavenly Millennium—God’s people are fully restored into secured eternal life and all of them experience their first full day (1,000 years) in the eternally comforting rest of God
To observe the Feast of Tabernacles is to acknowledge that God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.23 Faithful sabbath-resting on the first day of Tabernacles is a sign24 of acknowledging Yahweh as the Creator who not only made heaven and earth with all that is in them before resting on the seventh day with Adam and Eve,25 but also that the first weekly Sabbath was the first day that mankind walked with God for a full day.
Lev. 23:33-36.
Col. 2:16-17.
Cf. Mk. 7:7; Matt. 15:9.
Cf. II Cor. 2:17.
Ezek. 37:24-28.
Jer. 31:31-34; cf. Heb. 8:8-13.
Mk 14:24; Matt. 26:28; Lk. 22:20.
Lk. 17:21.
Jn. 14:2-3.
Rev. 3:12, 21:2.
Ezek. 40:2.
Isa. 2:2-3; Mic. 4:1-2.
Cf. Isa. 66:1.
Heb. 8:1-5; I Cor. 15:48.
Rev. 21:12-13.
Jn. 10:16.
Rev. 21:22-23.
Isa. 45:17.
Jn. 17:3.
Rom. 12:4-5; I Cor. 12:12-27; Eph. 5:23.
Rev. 21:6-8.
II Pet. 3:8.
Rev. 1:8, 11, 21:6, 22:13.
Ex. 31:13; Ezek. 20:12, 20.
Gen. 2:2-3; Ex. 20:8-11; Heb. 4:4.