In our Christian experience today, the Feast of Tabernacles signifies the rich, full, and ultimate enjoyment of all that Christ is; God wants us to have a full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ in the church life today and in the millennium.
The Feast of Tabernacles – the last feast of the year – signifies (on the prophetic side) Israel’s full enjoyment of the restored old creation in the millennium, and the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ for the overcoming believers.
When we look at this feast we can consider two things: what does it signify prophetically, and how does this feast apply to our Christian life.
This feast signifies the coming millennium as a dispensational, joyful blessing for God’s redeemed people to enjoy with God for a full period of time in God’s old creation.
The fact that this feast was for seven days shows that it will last for a complete course of days, which will be a thousand years. According to this type, in the millennium every day an offering will be presented to God to signify that Christ is God’s food in our experiences, which is offered to God for His satisfaction so that we and God may enjoy mutual rest.
During this feast there’s no work of labour; there’s only feasting and enjoyment, with no human labour. Rather, there’s the enjoyment and feasting with God and with His people.
Today we want to see more concerning this feast both in its prophetic fulfillment and in its spiritual application to us today.
God will Gain a full Harvest and the Millennial Kingdom will be a Feast to God and His Redeemed
After the people of Israel gathered the harvest, they kept the feast of Tabernacles for seven days; this signifies that the millennium – the period of 1000 years after this age – will come after the harvest of what God desires to obtain on earth.
God wants to obtain something here on earth today, in age after age; in this age, the age of grace, the age of the mystery, God wants to obtain something, and we are here for God’s desire.
In His eternal plan God has a purpose with man; this purpose is to produce a people for His expression, which will consummate in the New Jerusalem (see Eph. 3:11; 1:20-23; Rev. 21:2).
For His purpose we announce the full gospel – the gospel of the glory of God, the gospel of peace, the gospel of the unsearchable riches of Christ, and the gospel of the kingdom, so that we may bring multitudes of people to be added to the Lord through faith and baptism, so that the Lord would have a corporate expression – the Body of Christ, expressed as the many local churches all over the earth.
The local churches are the procedure for the bringing forth of the Body of Christ, which will be the manifestation of the new man, which will become the prepared bride; when this takes place, the Lord will return, and the age of the feast of the Tabernacles will start.
God uses four dispensations to do His work of the new creation on man in the old creation: the dispensations of the fathers, the law, the church, and the millennial kingdom.
After His creation of the heavens and the earth, God used these four dispensations to do His word. First there is the dispensation of the fathers – also called the dispensation before law or without law, from Adam to Moses.
Then there’s the dispensation of the law, from Moses to Christ’s first coming. The third is the dispensation of the church, from Pentecost to Christ’s second coming. Finally, there’s the dispensation of the millennium, the kingdom of the thousand years.
The center of God’s creation is man, and in His plan God wants to produce a people for His corporate expression. He works to make man into a new creation that has God’s life and nature in it, so that man would corporately express and represent God.
Today we are in the dispensation of grace, and in the next dispensation – the dispensation of the millennial kingdom – there will be a full harvest of what God has been doing in the first three dispensations.
The millennial kingdom will be a feast both to God and to His redeemed (see Lev. 23:34). The recovered Israel will experience the feast of Tabernacles, having a foretaste of the New Jerusalem for one thousand years.
At the end of the millennium there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and all believers from all ages will be matured and perfected. Even the New Jerusalem, though it is eternal and a city, will be called, The tabernacle of God with man, showing that for eternity in the new heaven and new earth we will have an eternal feast of Tabernacles.
In the millennium God’s redeemed people – including the church and the kingdom of Israel – will enjoy the feast.
What we want to do, however, is to enjoy this feast today in the church age, and we want to also be in the kingdom age feasting with the Lord and having the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ with all the saints, and finally be for eternity enjoying Christ to the uttermost!
Lord Jesus, we want to enjoy You today with all the saints as our feast. Give us the experiences we need, Lord, that we may labour on Christ, bring forth Christ to the meeting and before God, and be filled with Christ, experience Christ, and enjoy Christ. Amen, Lord Jesus, bring us into the full and ultimate enjoyment of all that Christ is. May we have the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ in the next age by cooperating with Him to the uttermost in this age to be ripened and matured and thus be qualified to feast with Him and His overcomers for one thousand years!
In the Millennium we will have the Full and Ultimate Enjoyment of Christ with His Redeemed
The Feast of Tabernacles was the Feast of Ingathering, the feast of the harvest; this feast was when the full harvest was brought in, and it signifies the rich, full, and ultimate enjoyment of all that Christ is (Lev. 23:33-44; Exo. 23:16).
This is a consummate feast, for there’s the fulness of the harvest being brought in; this feast signifies the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ. Christ as the Feast of Tabernacles is for ultimate enjoyment.
We want to touch this full and ultimate enjoyment together, in an unprecedented and consummate way, and we will enjoy this to the maximum, higher and higher, in an inexplicable and amazing way for one thousand years and for eternity!
First, we begin the enjoyment of Christ from the Feast of Unleavened Bread, enjoying Him as the sinless life supply; we continue by enjoying the riches of the resurrected Christ in the feast of Firstfruits, and we come to the ultimate enjoyment of Christ as the Feast of Tabernacles (Lev. 23:6-14, 33-44).
After the full harvest of their crops, the Jewish people observed the Feast of Tabernacles to worship God and enjoy what they had reaped (Deut. 16:13-15).
The Feast of Tabernacles was held at the time of the reaping of the harvest of the good land given by God (Exo. 23:16).
For us today, the reality of this good land is the Spirit (Gal. 3:14; Phil. 1:19). As seen in Gal. 3:14, Christ not only bore the curse for us – He became a curse on our behalf, so that the blessing of Abraham – the Spirit – might come to us, the Gentiles.
Christ paid an incredible price, the Father accepted it, and we enjoy and receive the Spirit as the ultimate blessing; this Spirit is the reality of the all-inclusive Christ as the fulfillment of the type of the good land.
Since Christ is eventually realized as the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit, the Spirit as the realization of Christ in our experience is the good land as the source of God’s bountiful supply for us to enjoy (1 Cor. 15:45; Gal. 3:14).
Today we prepare for the feast of the tabernacles – for the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ – by experiencing and enjoying the Spirit.
We need to labour on Christ as the good land by first being nourished in the Word of God, exercising our spirit to contact the Lord, be one with the Lord, and experience the Lord in every situation of our life.
No matter what circumstances we are in, no matter how we are feeling and what we go through, we exercise our mingled spirit to contact the resurrected Christ as the Spirit; in this way, we labour on Him and we gain Him.
We may not know what is being wrought into us – it may be something of Christ as the pomegranate, the olive tree, the stones, the iron, or some precious materials…Christ is being wrought into us by our exercise.
The feast of Tabernacles was a feast for God’s people to enjoy and be satisfied before God (see Lev. 23:40; Rom. 14:17). As the last feast of all the feasts ordained by God for His people, the Feast of Tabernacles is for their enjoyment of the rich produce of the good land at its harvest time for their satisfaction (see Lev. 23:34, 39-43).
Christ as the reality of the Feast of Tabernacles is such a feast for our experience and enjoyment today; on the one hand we will have the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ with His redeemed in the millennium, but on the other, today we need to enjoy Christ to the uttermost.
And, as seen in the type of living in booths made of palm trees and olive trees for a week for this feast, we are daily working together with the Lord and cooperating with Him to have many precious memories and experiences of Christ.
In the coming kingdom age, as we are in the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ with His overcomers, we will remember the kind of life we lived during the age of the church; such memories are of living the life of a tent, always being ready to move one with the Lord, and living for God’s interest on earth today.
As those who love the Lord, we cannot be set, settled, or occupied; we are looking for a city with foundations, the New Jerusalem, whose Architect and Builder was God.
If we don’t cooperate with the Lord in this age, however, we will need one thousand years to mature in the next age, and we will miss the Feast of Tabernacles. Oh Lord Jesus!
May we be those who enter into the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ, and may we sojourn on this earth by dwelling in tents, living as pilgrims and sojourners, and being constituted with Christ as the One who honors God and man, and experiencing His victorious resurrection life.
Lord Jesus, give us the experiences we need for us to enter into the rich, full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ together with God’s redeemed. We want to cooperate with You in this age of grace by turning to our spirit no matter what situation we’re in, no matter how we feel, and no matter what is weighing us down. Yes, Lord Jesus, we want to labor on Christ as the good land so that we may experience all the riches of Christ and have more of the all-inclusive life-giving Spirit wrought into our being. May our living here on earth be as sojourners, may our experience be full of the enjoyment of Christ, and may we be produced as the overcomers in this age who will enter into the full and ultimate enjoyment of Christ in the next age!
References and Hymns on this Topic
- Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by Ron Kangas for this week, and portions from, Life-study of Leviticus, msg. 54 (by Witness Lee), as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Leviticus (2), week 9, The Feasts (2) – The Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Pentecost, and the Feast of Tabernacles.
- Hymns on this topic:
# All we need to do is labor, / Working on the land each day; / Not expecting ’manna’ blessing, / Working in a normal way. / God and man cooperating / While for harvest we are waiting. / Labor thus will bring the increase / Of the land with all its worth, / And the Lord will have the harvest, / When He comes to reap the earth. / To provide the Lord the way, / We must labor day by day. (Hymns #1166)
# Labor on Jesus to have Him increased! / Then seek God’s dwelling and come to the feast! / There bring and offer your surplus to God, / There eat the riches, rejoice in the Lord! (Hymns #1168)
# Lord Jesus, how blest to be those / Who bring in Thy kingdom to earth, / Affording Thee rule over all / And showing to all Thy great worth! / How blest to be those at the feast, / Where Thou wilt be one with Thy Bride! / Lord, make us wise virgins for Thee, / Who e’er in Thy presence abide. (Hymns #1303)
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