Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles – foundations of the Christian faith
Passover = Pesach
Pentecost = Shavuot
Tabernacles = Sukkot
There were, in the Old Testament, three feasts of Israel that men were commanded to attend:
‘Three times you shall keep a feast to Me in the year:
You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (Passover) 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;
and the Feast of Harvest (Pentecost), the first fruits of your labours which you have sown in the field;
and the Feast of Ingathering (Tabernacles) at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labours from the field.
Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.’ Exodus 23 v 14-17
Preamble
The temple, and before that Moses’ tabernacle (tent), and the entire Old Testament sacrificial system were ‘shadows’ of the reality fulfilled in the New Testament through Christ:
‘Priests offer the gifts according to the Law and serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly as Moses was instructed when he was about to make the tabernacle. For He said ‘See that you make all things according to the pattern shown you on the mountain’…copies of things in heaven…for Christ has not entered holy places made with hands, copies of the true, but into heaven itself…Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many’ Hebrews 8 v 4 ff
If we reduce the teaching of the New Testament and the gospel to ‘having faith in Christ’ we impoverish our congregations.
We often need to be reminded that the term ‘Christ’ or ‘Messiah’ refers to the anointing of Jesus with the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament only prophets, priests, and kings were anointed with the Holy Spirit. Sometimes oil was used to symbolise the anointing, such as when Samuel anointed David to be King, but Jesus as Messiah, the Christ, was anointed by the Holy Spirit to be Prophet, Priest, and King…King of Israel.
We place our faith in Christ because he fulfilled each of the three feasts which served as shadows and copies of the reality that was Christ.
Passover
Passover (Pesach), was originally instituted to celebrate the Exodus from Egypt when Israelites daubed the blood of a lamb on their doors to ensure that the destroying angel sent by God would ‘pass over’ their house and the people inside. This is fulfilled in Christ, shedding His blood on the cross, as the lamb of God. Through His sacrifice, we are forgiven.
If escaping from Egypt for the Jews with Moses and escaping sin through Christ is important it is equally important to remember the purpose was not only escape ‘from’ Egypt under Moses but escape ‘to’ the Promised Land under Joshua. Equally, in the church, we must not only rejoice in our redemption ‘from’ sin, but also enter into our promised land, Christ Himself. We need faith to leave, and faith to enter in. The Israelites had to overcome many obstacles: Pharoah’s opposition, trials in the desert, and finally the battle at Jericho to enter in, and so will we. At heart, though, it was always a matter of faith for the Israelites, that God could do both, release them from Egypt and plant them in a new land. St Paul wrote ‘For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us’ 1 Cor 5 v 7. It is because of Him that we are redeemed from sin and because of Him that we can enter into our new identity, and new life, in Christ.
Pentecost
Pentecost (Shavuot) occurred fifty days after Passover. Pentecost means fifty. On the day of Pentecost after Passover, when Jesus was crucified, the Holy Spirit was poured out from on High. Jesus spoke to the disciples after the Resurrection:
‘John baptised with water but you shall be baptised with the Holy Spirit…you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you’ Acts 1 v 5,8
‘When the day of Pentecost had fully come…they were filled with the Holy Spirit’ Acts 2 v 4
In the Old Testament, Pentecost was celebrated to give thanks to God for the firstfruits of the harvest. Those who believed and received the gift of the Spirit were the firstfruits of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
Also, the Law was given to Moses on this day, but in the New Testament, the Spirit was poured out.
Just as each believer needs to know they are forgiven through the cross and placed ‘in Christ’, each believer must be baptised in the Spirit. This is Christianity, it is not an optional extra, for Pentecostals or Charismatics. It is the fulfilment of the feast of Pentecost. The church is not to be a human organisation managed and led by men, it is a living body led by the Spirit with each ‘member’ of the body baptised in the Spirit so that every time believers gather together the gathering is led by the Spirit who pours out His gifts as He chooses.
Tabernacles
Tabernacles (Sukkot)
‘And you shall take for yourselves on the first day the…branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees…You shall dwell in booths for seven days…that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths/tabernacles/tents when I brought them out of the land of Egypt’ Leviticus 23 v 40
When Moses made the tabernacle according to the pattern God showed him, it was for God to dwell in. The Israelites lived in tents during their journey in the desert to the Promised Land, as did God. The tabernacle of the Lord was sited outside the camp and Moses would go in to meet with the Lord:
‘When Moses entered the tabernacle…the Lord spoke to Moses, face to face, as a man speaks to his friend’ Exodus 33 v 9-11
Just as Jesus was the true Passover Lamb, the Lamb of God, and poured out the Holy Spirit from heaven at Pentecost, so He was the fulfilment of Sukkot, the Feast of Tabernacles:
‘And the Word made flesh and tabernacled among us’ John 1 v 14
The Greek for ‘tabernacles’ is usually translated as ‘dwelt’, but the Greek word means ‘pitched His tent’ i.e. And Jesus spoke to His heavenly Father as a man speaks with His friend.
The fulfilment is not confined simply to Christ. Just as the sacrifice of Christ on the cross as the Lamb of God enables everyone to be ‘saved’ from the judgement of God, and to know that salvation, so the fulfilment of Tabernacles is for the church as well as Jesus because the church is in Him, in Christ.
‘Do you not know you are the temple of God and the Spirit tabernacles (dwells) in you?’ 1 Cor 3v16
‘Do you not know your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you…’ 1 Cor 6 v 19
‘You are the temple of the living God’ 2 Cor 6 v 16
The Feast of Tabernacles as recorded in John’s gospel in chapter 7 is another occasion when Jesus was in Jerusalem:
‘The Feast of Tabernacles was at hand…about the middle of the feast Jesus went up to the Temple and taught…on the last day of the feast, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink…out of his heart will flow streams of living water’. This He spoke concerning the Spirit, whom those who believed would receive, for the Holy Spirit was not yet given.’ John 7 v 2 ff
In the desert the Israelites had no water and no source of food; this was supernaturally provided; manna for food each morning and water coming from a rock. This is now fulfilled in the New Testament with the streams of living water coming from the seemingly most unlikely place – the hearts of those who believe in Him, Jews and Gentiles.
Churches are the ‘ekklesia’ or the called-out ones who are ‘living stones’, as Peter calls them, or ‘temples of the living God’ as Paul describes us.
Interestingly, Jews celebrate Sukkot (Tabernacles) today by arranging palm branches or similar as a loose-fitting roof as they gather underneath. The story of their exodus from slavery in Egypt and their journey through the wilderness using these temporary structures is retold.
For Christians, this symbolises our exodus from the slavery of sin and our pilgrimage or sojourning in this world. And our rooves, individually and as churches, should not be permanent hard structures but open enough to the heavens, to heaven in fact. Open to heaven in the sense that we are the temple now, where God is present.
All three feasts are permanently fulfilled in us:
Redemption from the slavery of sin - Passover
Open to the baptism of the Spirit - Pentecost
Completely dependent on God as our life – Tabernacles
Churches today tend to reflect one or two of these feast fulfilments rather than all three simultaneously.
In very approximate terms Evangelical churches are secure in preaching, teaching, and believing Jesus as the Passover Lamb of God. They know and preach salvation from sin, that our sins are forgiven, but not Pentecost. Until the minister or others within an Evangelical church see that Pentecost opens the way for the baptism in the Spirit, and experiences it, the church will be left with a Passover-only foundation.
Pentecostal and Charismatic churches (of any denomination and none) will preach Passover and Pentecost: forgiveness, relationship with God restored, and the baptism of the Spirit. But how many preach Tabernacles? A cursory examination of a few commentaries that attempt to tackle the relevance of Tabernacles to the church offset it to after the return of the Messiah and the winding up of this age (Rev 21 v 3). Whilst all three feasts inevitably have an eternal dimension that finds their greatest fulfilment in the age to come, Tabernacles, just as with Passover and Pentecost, has a Now dimension that is often not preached.
But Tabernacles? Does your church meet under a partially open roof? In other words, do your leaders facilitate openness to the Spirit of God when you meet? Or is the meeting pre-organised? The songs, the notices, the teaching, prayers and so on. Some churches have a written liturgy others have an unwritten liturgy…but you can set your watch by when the children are allowed to go to Sunday school.
A church that has all three working together simultaneously and seamlessly knows it is the body of Christ and its meetings are not only spontaneous but scriptural:
‘Whenever you meet together, each of you has a song, a teaching, a tongue, a revelation, an interpretation, let all things be done for edification’ 1 Cor 14 v 26
If the leadership in a church is not permitting this to be the norm something is wrong. There is no room for human control in the church, there is one head of the church, Jesus. Just as our heads coordinate our body’s functions so Jesus will coordinate His body, the body of Christ.
The extent to which each feast is fulfilled in our understanding and experience will be the extent to which we can minister the life of the Spirit to others. A believer may have been appointed as a Vicar, Pastor, Minister, homegroup leader, worship leader, Sunday school, or youth leader, but he or she can only minister what they have received from heaven.
If a church congregation is caught up in believing all three feasts and how they are fulfilled in Christ and in then in them, they are unlikely to want to appoint one person to take up an overall leadership role – this is reserved for Jesus Christ. In Acts, the apostles appointed elders, plural, never just one elder.
Elders, then, are responsible for teaching the congregation and encouraging growth toward spiritual maturity, laying the foundation of the three feasts, amongst other tasks. They will also be open to the ministry of prophets, teachers, evangelists, or visiting apostles – see the account of the church at Antioch in Acts 13. All meetings will be open to the leading of the Spirit because Jesus is head of the body. Elders’ meetings, diaconates, leaders’ meetings, home group meetings, musicians and worship meetings, pastoral…and so on, none are business meetings in the sense that they are led by a chairman through a predetermined agenda. The agenda is not set by man. All meetings, the scripture says ‘whenever you meet’ are transformed.
As in the other churches in Acts, there is no mention of one leader or of human decision-making processes at play in Antioch: ‘As they ministered to the Lord and fasted, the Holy Spirit said, “Now separate to Me Barnabas and Saul for the work I have called them’’ ’ Acts 13 v 1,2
If you are a Christian living in Europe or another Western country, and reading this, you are so because of this meeting in Antioch; it was Paul and Barnabas who carried the gospel around the Mediterranean to Rome, to Greece, possibly to Spain, and beyond. The origins of Christianity in Europe lie in this one meeting and the simple phrase ‘as they ministered to the Lord the Holy Spirit said…’ not as the Vicar held a strategy meeting with his churchwardens, or the Baptist minister worked through a list of projects with the diaconate, or the Pentecostal Pastor with the elders. All meetings had rooves open to heaven where everybody gathered knew that God now dwells (tabernacles) with His people and He has the pre-eminent place.
I think we’d all agree that the meeting as described in Acts 13 that led to Paul and Barnabas being appointed as apostles (apostles meaning ‘sent ones’) was a successful meeting!
We need to preach all three feasts to have a clear foundation – the ‘Christianity’ that will flow from such churches will be just like having Jesus in town…because that is precisely what it is.