. God gives Moses the command that
all the males of Israel should come to the place where God causes His name to
dwell, in order that they may keep three feasts: Unleavened Bread (אֶת־חַג הַמַּצֹּות (chag hamatzot)),
Firstfruits (רֵאשִׁית קָצִיר (Reshit Katzir)), and
Ingathering (or Tabernacles (סֻכּוֹת (Sukkoth)). Exodus 23:14-17—“14
Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year: 15 You shall keep the
Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I
commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came
out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty); 16 and the Feast of Harvest,
the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast
of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of
your labors from the field. 17 Three times in the year all your males shall
appear before the Lord GOD.” If God says something once, it’s
important. If he says it twice, it’s even more important. If He says the
same thing twice within a span of about thirty seconds—you
better pay attention. Twice, in four verses (verse 14 and verse 17), God tells
the people, “Three times all your males shall
appear before Me.” I think God was pretty emphatic about this
regulation.
And since Christ was God in the flesh, do you think He
was pretty adamant about keeping these feasts? And if so, why? Well, since we
know that the Law was meant to point us to Christ, and that the feasts and sacrifices
pointed to Christ (see Galatians 3:23-25), and since Christ was born
under the Law (Galatians 4:4), then Christ knew that he must fulfill the
righteous requirements of the Law (Romans 8:3), which is why He was so
steadfast about going to Jerusalem during the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Matthew
26:1-4—1 Now it came to pass, when Jesus had
finished all these sayings—that is, after instructing His disciples
concerning the signs that would accompany the Great tribulation and His
eventual return—when Jesus had finished all these
sayings, He said to His disciples, “2 You know
that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to
be crucified.” 3 Then the chief priests, the
scribes, and the elders of the people assembled at the palace of the high
priest, who was called Caiaphas, 4 and plotted to take Jesus by trickery and
kill Him. Does this passage not show the utter foolishness of men? We
humans think we have everything all figured out; we think that our plans are
foolproof and that we are so wise. And yet, while the elders and chief priests
are plotting ways to destroy this Man from Nazareth, who has brought forth good
news to both Jew and Gentile, making all their plans under cover of darkness
and in their inner rooms, God knew all they were plotting, and far from being
surprised, or caught off guard, or having to change His plans, this was in fact
happening in the exact way that God had planned. Acts 2:22-23—“22 Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a
Man attested by God to you by miracles, wonders, and signs which God did
through Him in your midst, as you yourselves also know—23 Him, being
delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, you have
taken by lawless hands, have crucified, and put to death.” Adam Clarke—
“It was necessary to show the Jews that it was not through Christ’s weakness or inability to defend himself that he was taken; nor was it through their malice merely that he was slain; for God had determined long before, from the foundation of the world, to give his Son a sacrifice for sin; and the treachery of Judas, and the malice of the Jews were only the incidental means by which the great counsel of God was fulfilled.”
And only by dwelling within a tabernacle of flesh
could the Son of God taste death. After all, how could He die if he had come in
all of His glory, all of His eternal Godhood, all of His unchangeableness? If
God had not become man, then He could not have been a sacrifice. If He had not
kept the Law—not just the Ten Commandments, but the entirety of the Law given
to Moses by God—He could not have been a perfect
sacrifice. Therefore, so that He might be that perfect sacrifice, not only did
Jesus comply with all the rules and ordinances and regulations of His everyday
life, He complied with those commands that “Three times in the year all your
males shall appear before the Lord GOD”. And because of
His perfect obedience to the Father in obeying all of the statutes contained in
the Law, we who are imperfect and fallen and sinful and rebellious and—fill in
your own synonym here—even though it is impossible for any man to fulfill the
Law no matter how hard he may try (Galatians 2:16, Romans 3:20), we
can be counted righteous by the obedience of our Lord and Savior (see Romans
5:12-19). Let us keep the feasts, with clean hands and a pure heart, by our
faith in Christ as our substitute who died so that we may live (1st
Corinthians 5:8).
Finally, there is an end-times application for (סֻכּוֹת (Sukkoth). Turn to Zechariah
14. There are really two prophetic words in this chapter of Zechariah that
refer to events that will happen sometime after Christ returns. And these
predictions really throw a monkey wrench into people’s amillenial doctrine. The
first prediction is Zechariah 14:1-4—1
Behold, the day of the LORD is coming, and your spoil will be divided in your
midst. 2 For I will gather all the nations to battle against Jerusalem; the
city shall be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of the
city shall go into captivity, but the remnant of the people shall not be cut
off from the city. 3 Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those
nations, as He fights in the day of battle. 4 And in that day His feet will
stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. And the Mount
of Olives shall be split in two, from east to west, making a very large valley;
half of the mountain shall move toward the north and half of it toward the
south. There are some in the amillenial camp who will say that this
prediction was fulfilled in the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple in
Jerusalem in AD 70. However, there are some details in this word that did not
come to pass during that fateful period. For one thing, who would come against
Jerusalem? All the nations—not just the
Romans. Second, what does the word say will happen after this tragic event? Then the LORD will go forth and fight against those
nations. Did God go into battle against ‘those nations’? No. Third, and
most obvious, His feet did not stand on the Mount of Olives so that mountain was split in two. Unless there was some great, cataclysmic event that was
never recorded in history. Since these events have not taken place, then this
prophecy is still be left to be fulfilled.
The second prophecy in Zechariah 14 relates to (סֻכּוֹת (Sukkoth)). And this prophecy
flows from the same thought stream as the passage we just saw. It’s all one
long passage, and look what happens after those things we just read. Zechariah
14:13-17—13 It shall come to pass in that day
that a great panic from the LORD will be among them. Everyone will seize the
hand of his neighbor, and raise his hand against his neighbor's hand; 14 Judah
also will fight at Jerusalem. And the wealth of all the surrounding nations
shall be gathered together: gold, silver, and apparel in great abundance. 15
Such also shall be the plague on the horse and the mule, on the camel and the
donkey, and on all the cattle that will be in those camps. So shall this plague
be. 16 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, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles
(סֻכּוֹת (Sukkoth)). 17 And it shall be
that whichever of the 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. OK folks,
you know the question: Are all the nations which
came against Jerusalem going up to Jerusalem to
worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles?
The answer, of course, is a resounding……NO! None of the things
contained in this 14th chapter of the burden of Zechariah have come
to pass. And since God is not a lira, that means that there must be some future
fulfillment, and the things that Jesus spoke of in the Olivet Discourse, and
which Paul wrote about in parts of his epistles, have not come to pass, and
thus the amillenial position is severely weakened. From the Jamieson, Fausset
and Brown Commentary—
“The other two great yearly feasts, Passover and
Pentecost, are not specified, because, their antitypes having come, the types
are done away with. But the Feast of Tabernacles will be commemorative of the
Jews’ sojourn, not merely forty years in the wilderness, but for almost two
thousand years of their dispersion. So it was kept on their return from the
Babylonian dispersion (Nehemiah 8:14-17). It was the feast on which Jesus made
His triumphal entry into Jerusalem (Matthew 21:8)…The feast on which Jesus gave
the invitation to the living waters of salvation (“Hosanna,” save us now, was
the cry, Matthew 21:9; compare Psalm 118:25, Psalm 118:26) (John 7:2, John 7:37).
To the Gentiles, too, it will be significant of perfected salvation after past
wanderings in a moral wilderness, as it originally commemorated the ingathering
of the harvest. The seedtime of tears shall then have issued in the harvest of
joy [Moore]."
Let us keep (סֻכּוֹת (Sukkoth)), for now, in our hearts, rejoicing that God the Son left His throne to tabernacle among us, to invest His glory within a tent of flesh, to become weak for our sakes, that we may be made mighty through Him. And let us also rejoice that our earthly tabernacle will one day be made as His glorified body, spotless, blameless, sinless and eternal, never decaying, never becoming sick, never again subject to the bonds of death. For we shall reign with Him, we shall be His people, and He shall be our God.
Jesus Christ is Lord.
Amen.
