The following sermon was delivered by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on September 25, 1983. The title is, The Best is Yet to Come, and the scripture references are Exodus chapter 40, verses 1 through 16 and 34 through 38, and Hebrews chapter 9, verses 1 through 14. 

Virtually everything in the old covenant is a sort of a prefigure or a foreshadowing of the new if you are listening closely to those two lessons you see that that that pertains in a special way to all of the regulations all of the ritual all of the paraphernalia of worship in the old testament tremendous detail given in the book of exodus just by way of a comparison you might bear in mind that it takes about 15 verses to give us the Ten Commandments. And then God takes 15 chapters to tell Moses and the ancient Jews how to construct the tabernacle and how to behave inside of it. It tells you something of the importance of all this.

And every single aspect of Old Testament worship foreshadows, prefigures what is to come in Jesus. That's one of the principal messages of the book of Hebrews. Chapter 10 verse 1 says, Since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities.

And then it goes on to make another point. The law, the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, the worship especially of the ancient Jews is like a shadow that comes into the room before you do. The sun is at my back and as I come through the door my shadow comes in first.

And so if we took the time you could see in virtually everything that was discussed in Exodus you could see a correspondence in Christ. An interesting Bible study, some of you have done this with me, if you never have, an interesting Bible study would be to sometime compare what is said in Exodus chapter 40, describing the tabernacle, with what John sees in his tremendous vision in Revelation chapter 4. Point for point for point for point.

The one is a model of the other. And so that also is true with regard to the great festivals of ancient Israel. They prefigure what comes to be fulfilled in the Lord Jesus.

Today we come to the feast or the festival of tabernacles. And tabernacles primarily had to do with the coming at last into the land of Canaan, into the promised land of God's chosen people. You remember the story.

They went down to Egypt. Joseph had been sold by his brothers into Egyptian slavery, and then he came into a position of great prominence in a time of famine. The brothers came down, and eventually they all moved down there with all their families and all their flocks and all their servants and so on.

Time went on. A new pharaoh came along. The people fell into disfavor, and he made virtual slaves out of them.

430 years they were in slavery in Egypt and all that time they kept remembering that God had said I have a land for you a land of promise a land unimaginably wonderful rich and beautiful flowing with milk and honey a land of just tremendous rest and safety 430 years they waited can you imagine that? over twice as long as our nation has been in existence. And then finally, the great day.

Moses was raised up by God to deliver his people, and out they went. At last, we're going to the promised land. Funny thing happened on the way to the promised land.

Another whole generation goes by. Forty years wandering in the wilderness. and during that 40 years they worshipped in what was called the tabernacle we heard it described the tent of meeting it was a portable church and it was portable because they were constantly on the move some of you have made a number of moves in your lifetime especially folks in the military I know some of you have moved maybe 15, 16, 17 times I want you to picture a people of somewhere around three, maybe three and a half million people, making 40 moves in 40 years.

And without the help of allied van lines. Constantly on the move. A portable tent, a portable meeting house, and also they lived in little tabernacles.

It was the big tabernacle where they came to worship, but they lived in little tabernacles, little tents. And in all that time, never a permanent residence. Never a little garden that they could plant and tend and harvest.

Never a sense of being at home. We're nomads. We're wanderers.

Our home is somewhere over the rainbow, somewhere over the Jordan, somewhere. a land of promise. And then finally, finally, 40 years later, Joshua leads the people dry shod across the Jordan and they come into the land.

I don't know if we can even begin to feel what that must have felt like. Nearly five centuries of promises being handed down from one generation to another. And finally, we're home.

And do you know it says in Joshua chapter 5, the first thing they did as they came into the land of Canaan was they celebrated once again the Passover meal. The Passover which had started this whole process of deliverance 40 years earlier. They celebrated that again, and the very next sentence says this, and the manna ceased the very next day.

And the people of Israel ate of the fruit of the land of Canaan that year. You see, for those 40 years of wandering, they were provided for. Remarkably, wonderfully, supernaturally provided for.

Every morning they'd go out and the ground would be covered with manna, bread, like hoarfrost on the ground. In the evenings, the quail would come in and drop like autumn leaves. For the most part, they were in the desert.

arid nothing could grow but beyond that no water and yet that wasn't a problem moses would touch a flinty rock with the tip of his staff and there would be a stream in the desert you know it says that even their shoes didn't wear out in 40 years of wandering god protected them god provided for them they were remarkably cared for but you see the point is none of that was their real inheritance. None of that was their destiny. None of that even began to fulfill the promise.

What they were looking for was not supernatural bread from heaven, but the fruit of the land. And when they got into the land the next day, the manna stops and they begin to enjoy the fruit of the land of Canaan. Home at last.

Home at last. You can just hear them with one great collective sigh of relief. Well, they had some growing to do beyond that.

The story is hardly over, but that's the background of tabernacles. And it's as if God said, now that you're here, now that you're here, now that the promise has been fulfilled, I want you to do two things simultaneously. Now, for the first time in a generation, there will be crops to harvest.

and I want you to give thanks for that. I want you to gather in your produce at the end of the growing season and have a tremendous celebration. It's very like our own Thanksgiving service.

The end of the growing season, we celebrate, we acknowledge that we're a people that have been blessed by God. I want you to have a service of Thanksgiving, he said. But I want you to do something else.

At the same time, I want you to come at that time of year to the city of Jerusalem and for a week live once again in tabernacles. Live in tents. I want you never to forget that time of wandering, that time of wilderness.

I want you never to forget and take this all for granted. So I want you to come to Jerusalem and erect for yourselves little portable temporary residences and you live for a week in those tabernacles and celebrate my bringing you into the land of plenty and the land of promise. Well, the Jews have celebrated just exactly that ever since.

And interestingly enough, in recent years, not only Jews from all over the world, but Christians in growing numbers have come to celebrate with them. tens of thousands of people are in Jerusalem right now for the Feast of Tabernacles we're right in the middle of it Thursday to Thursday as a matter of fact 15 members of our parish are there right now including Neil and Marsha Labar admittedly some of the booths that they're living in are more like the Jerusalem Hilton but the idea is still the same come and live in temporary residence remember that time in the wilderness even as you celebrate coming home. Some of you know this and some of you are finding this brand new but there are two things about it that absolutely fascinate me.

First is that God gave lengthy, explicit and repeated instructions about how to celebrate this festival long before they ever got there. long before they ever got there. As a matter of fact, at the very beginning of the Exodus, God spelled out in great detail what they were supposed to do when they got there.

And all during that generation of wandering, they were anticipating getting into the land. The second thing is that, as I said at the beginning, virtually everything in the Old Testament has a Christian counterpart, a Christian fulfillment, Except this. Except this.

The three great festivals of ancient Israel were Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles. And you can immediately see the fulfillment of Passover. It was, in fact, in the midst of the Passover meal that Jesus took the bread and He broke it and He said, this is My body.

Passover commemorated God delivering Israel when the angel of death swept through Egypt. And you remember how the Israelis took the blood and put it on the doorposts and the lintel of their homes. And it says when the angel of death saw the blood, he passed over and they were spared.

You see, we're people who have come under the blood of Jesus. And the angel of death sees the blood and passes over us. Jesus took the cup of celebration from that same meal and He said, this is the new covenant in My blood.

You can't talk about deliverance without seeing that I'm at the very center of it. What happened way back there in Egypt is simply a prefigure. Now I fulfill it.

I fill it fuller. This is a greater deliverance in My blood. And so Paul writes to the Corinthians, He says, Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us.

Fifty days after Passover came Pentecost, which was the harvest of the springtime crop. Typically in the Middle East there are two growing seasons, a relatively brief springtime season, a relatively small harvest from that. It's called the harvest of first fruits.

Then there's a long, hot, dry, arid summertime. Not much grows. And then the autumn tends to be a much more abundant time of rainfall and therefore bigger crops, richer harvest, and they gather it in for tabernacles.

Pentecost was fulfilled right on schedule. Right on schedule, 50 days after Easter. On the day of Pentecost, God poured out His Spirit, anointed that little band of disciples in the upper room.

They began to speak with other languages. Do you see what is happening there? Sometimes people say, Oh, I wish I could have gone...

I wish I could go back. I wish I could have been there in the days of the apostles. I wish I could have met Peter and James and John.

That might have been fun, but let me tell you something. That's just the first fruits. That's just the first fruits.

And the very phrase, the first fruits, implies there's something much more to come. I wouldn't go back for anything. Not for anything.

The best is yet to come, my friends. Pentecost looks forward to autumn. It looks forward to the autumn, the fall harvest.

it's no accident that we scheduled our outreach conference yesterday on this particular weekend you see what's being said is there is going to be a harvest and Jesus said pray to the Lord of the harvest that he might send forth laborers into his harvest there's going to be a harvest of souls but that's not the end of the story we got a promised land ahead Jesus said I go to prepare a place for you and if I go I will surely come back and take you to myself that where I am you may be also you put those two points together God gave instructions before they even got there to anticipate the feast of tabernacles and of all the Old Testament festivals this one alone hasn't yet been fulfilled I trust you see why we're celebrating it today we're celebrating it in anticipation in anticipation the best is yet to come Jesus is coming back and it may be soon to gather us to himself and we're crossing over Jordan and going into a land of promise and by comparison however good this life has been it's a wilderness oh yeah we've known God's provision thank God we have we've known supernatural expressions of love and care thank God we have but the best is yet to come I go to prepare a place for you said Jesus that you may be there with me forever it's an interesting thing Peter wrote this he said here's something I want you to understand, that scoffers will come in the last days with scoffing, following their own passions and saying, where is the promise of His coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all things have continued as they were from the beginning of creation. I suspect there were folks who said that during those 430 years of slavery, don't you?

We're never going to get out of here. I suspect there were people who said that during 40 years of wandering in the wilderness promised land, sure I bet you know people who have said that about the second coming of Jesus Christians are crazy you worship somebody that died 2,000 years ago and you think he's coming back interesting isn't it that the more they scoff the more they fulfill Scripture. God said so.

They'd scoff. But I'd put it to you this way. The greatest day in the history of the universe lies just ahead.

You can't separate it from Good Friday. You can't separate it from Easter. But there's a sense in which Good Friday and Easter are incomplete.

Because there's a land of promise. And you and I are pilgrims, sojourners, strangers, aliens, nomads. This isn't our home.

We're just passing through. Heaven is where we belong. And Jesus has gone to prepare it for us.

And He comes back soon to gather His bride, His church to Himself for the biggest blowout celebration that anybody has ever dreamed of. Are you ready? I wonder if you are.

What a tragedy it would be to go through all of the motions and all of the anticipation every time we say the Lord's Prayer, Thy kingdom come. every time we say the Nicene Creed and He shall come again in glory every time we celebrate the Lord's Supper He did institute and command His disciples to continue in the same until He comes again Christ has died Christ has risen Christ will come again but are you ready? Hallelujah if you're ready.

John said this, little children abide in Him so that when He comes, when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink from Him in shame that is coming. Feast of Tabernacles is the one celebration of anticipation. All the others we look back and we give thanks for all that God has done for us already in holy history.

Feast of Tabernacles looks forward and says the best is yet to come, but get ready for it. If there's any compromise in your life, if there's any area of your life that has not come under submission to the Lordship of Christ, if there's any sin that you haven't rooted out, if there are broken relationships that you haven't fixed or at least tried to by the grace of God, then let this great celebration today impel you to do that. For He comes.

He comes soon. He wants a church that's ready for Him. He comes to claim His bride.

And we say, even so, come Lord Jesus. Let's bow our heads together. Lord Jesus Christ thank you for loving me thank you for dying for me thank you for rising for me and thank You for Your promise that You're coming back that I might be with You forever.

Lord, I want to be ready. Search me by the Spirit of God and try me and see if there be any wicked way within me that I might have done with it and greet You with joy at Your coming. for I ask it in your own name Amen