Beginning of the End: Meaning of the Festivals

 The Passover was followed by the seven days’ Feast of Unleavened Bread. On the second day of the feast, the firstfruits of the year’s harvest were presented before God. The priest waved a sheaf of grain before the altar of God to acknowledge that everything was His. The harvest was not to be gathered until this ceremony had been performed.

Pentecost, the feast of harvest, came fifty days after the offering of firstfruits. As an expression of gratitude for grain, two loaves baked with yeast were presented before God. Pentecost was just one day, which was devoted to religious service.

The Feast of Tabernacles, or ingathering, came in the seventh month. This feast acknowledged God’s rich blessings in the produce from the orchard, olive grove, and vineyard. It was the crowning festival-gathering of the year. The harvest had been gathered into the granaries, the fruits, oil, and wine had been stored, and now the people came with their tributes of thanksgiving to God.

This feast was a time of rejoicing. It took place just after the  great Day of Atonement, when the people had received assurance that their sins would no longer be remembered. At peace with God, with the work of the harvest ended and the work of the new year not yet begun, the people could give themselves fully to the sacred, joyous experiences of the hour. As far as possible, all the household were to attend the feasts, and the servants, the Levites, the stranger, and the poor were made welcome to their hospitality.

Like the Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles commemorated past events. In memory of their pilgrim life in the wilderness, the people were to leave their homes and dwell in booths, or arbors, formed from the green branches “of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of leafy trees, and willows of the brook.” (Leviticus 23:40).

At these yearly gatherings the hearts of old and young would be encouraged in God’s service. As the people from different parts of the land mingled together, the ties that bound them to God and to one another would strengthen. Just as Israel celebrated the deliverance God had performed for their ancestors and how He miraculously preserved them during their journeys from Egypt, so we should gratefully remember the ways He has designed for bringing us out from darkness into the precious light of His grace and truth.

Those who lived long distances from the tabernacle must have spent more than a month of every year in attending the annual feasts. This example of devotion should help us grasp the importance of religious worship, the need for making our selfish, worldly interests less important than things that are spiritual and eternal. We experience a loss when we neglect coming together to encourage one another in the service of God. All of us are children of one Father, dependent on one another for happiness. Properly cultivating the social parts of our nature brings us into sympathy with others and gives us happiness.

The Feast of Tabernacles not only pointed back to the time spent in the wilderness, but forward to the great day of final ingathering. The Lord will send His reapers to gather the weeds in bundles for the fire and to gather the wheat into His storehouse. At that time the wicked will be destroyed—they will become “as though they had never been.” (Obadiah 1:16). And every voice in the whole universe will unite in joyful praise to God.

When the ransomed of the Lord are safely gathered into the heavenly Canaan, delivered from slavery to sin forever, they will “rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” (1 Peter 1:8). Then Christ’s great work of atonement will have been completed and their sins forever blotted out.

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,And come to Zion with singing,With everlasting joy on their heads. ...And sorrow and sighing shall flee away.  Isaiah 35:10