The following sermon was presented by the Reverend John W. Howe, Rector of Truro Episcopal Church in Fairfax, Virginia, on October 6, 1985. The title is, He is Preparing a Place for You, and the scripture reference is Leviticus chapter 23, verses 33 through 43. 

For about the last five years, we've been celebrating the Feast of Tabernacles here at Truro, along with growing numbers of churches throughout the world who have been adding this ancient Jewish festival to the Christian calendar. And especially for those to whom that's something new, I want to try to explain again why we're doing that. In the book of Hebrews, it says that virtually everything in the Old Covenant prefigures or foreshadows that which is fulfilled and completed in Jesus Christ.

And if you go back to the very beginning of God's instructions to Moses, you'll find that there were three great festivals that were commanded of the people of Israel every year. Since then, other lesser festivals have been added, but those three were the great festivals, and they were command performances. You did not stay home and refuse them.

Two of them, I suspect virtually all of you know something about, because they've already been fulfilled in Christ. What the book of Hebrews said has already happened. They have been fulfilled in Christ, and there is already a Christian counterpart.

heart. The third, tabernacles, you may be less familiar with because that's yet to come. But let's just recap.

The first of them was called the Feast of Unleavened Bread, more commonly known as the Passover. The Passover was a springtime celebration of deliverance from bondage in Egypt. And you remember the story, I'm sure, how God sent plague after plague warning the Egyptians to let my people go and Pharaoh repeatedly said he would and then he didn't and each plague was worse than what had come before until finally the most awful the unimaginably terrible plague in which the angel of death came and visited every house in Egypt and killed the firstborn of every household except for the Israelites who were forewarned by God and they'd been told here's what you must do kill a lamb and take some of the blood of that lamb and splash it on the doorposts of your house and on the lintel over over top the door and when the angel of death comes and he sees the blood, he will pass over your house and everyone inside it will remain safe.

The Israelites were told that they should be prepared on that awful evening of devastation. Be prepared. Eat your meal standing up with your coat on, with your staff in your hand, your shoes on your feet.

Eat in haste, ready to go on a moment's notice. And that's why it's called the Feast of unleavened bread. Really two reasons.

Leaven is yeast. Yeast takes time to work to make the bread rise. They didn't have any time.

Eat it in haste. Be ready to go in a moment. Secondly, leaven is almost always a symbol of corruption in the scriptures and they were being liberated from the corruption of bondage in Egypt.

Well, the Passover, of course, is fulfilled in the death of Jesus. John the Baptist at the very beginning of Jesus' ministry hailed him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He comes as a Passover Lamb.

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians, Christ our Passover has been sacrificed for us. It was in fact the Passover meal that Jesus was celebrating, we call it the Lord's Supper, with His disciples on the night before He died. It was the Passover elements that He identified Himself with.

He said, this bread, this unleavened Passover bread is My body. Incredible. When you let that really hit you, that He said, you will never again be able to eat this meal without realizing that I am part of, indeed I am the very center of, your deliverance.

I fulfill what God did back in Egypt this cup is my blood it already had centuries of meaning attached to it and suddenly he filled it fuller he fulfilled it filled it fuller with meaning he said I'm the one whose blood is shed for you symbolically spiritually the Christian is one who has come under the blood of the lamb We've been washed in the blood of the Lamb. The angel of death looks upon us and sees Jesus' blood and passes over us, and we're spared the wrath of God against sin. Well, that's the first great festival of ancient Israel, fulfilled in the death of Jesus on Good Friday.

The second was Pentecost. It came 50 days after the Passover. In fact, that's what the word Pentecost means.

It comes from 50. And originally, for the ancient Jews, that was an agricultural festival. It was, in the early summer, a celebration of the springtime harvest.

In the Middle East, there are two growing seasons. There's a springtime season. You have a certain amount of rain, and it produces its own harvest, primarily the barley crop, a springtime harvest.

Then you have a long, dry, hot summer. Typically not a whole lot is happening in terms of agriculture at that point. Then comes the autumn, more abundant rain, a much larger harvest at the end of the fall season.

Pentecost was a celebration of this springtime harvest. It was called the harvest of first fruits, suggesting that there would be more to come. And if the springtime harvest was a good one, that held the promise that the autumn harvest would be much better yet.

Interestingly enough, Pentecost was tied into Passover in a fascinating way. This is really a footnote to the story, but it's a fascinating little footnote. The Jews were commanded that in celebrating the Passover, in addition to the meal and all that that entailed, as the last thing in the Passover celebration.

They were to go out and gather the little tiny green barley shoots that were just beginning to poke through the earth. This is at the Passover. They go out and get the little barley shoots, bundle them up into sheaves, and wave them before the altar of the Lord in anticipation of what's going to happen 50 days later.

You see what I'm saying? The little shoots holding the promise of the harvest 50 days later. Kind of like we hold palm branches and wave them before the Lord on Palm Sunday.

So you might say that Passover anticipates Pentecost. Pentecost completes Passover. Pentecost is contained in embryo in Passover.

And of course, from the Christian point of view, it was on the very day of Pentecost that the Holy Spirit was poured out in power on that little band of disciples waiting in the upper room. They really didn't know what it was they were waiting for except that the Lord had told them, Wait until the Holy Spirit is poured out upon you. Wait.

And they waited. And He was poured out on the very day of Pentecost. and the church was empowered to begin to fulfill the Great Commission.

Stop and think about it. What else could you call the 120 in the upper room but the first fruits? The first fruits of the new covenant.

The first fruits, the springtime harvest. I wonder if you ever noticed a funny little footnote to that story. Have you noticed that on Easter evening, on Easter evening, Jesus came to His disciples, to the eleven actually, to ten.

Thomas was away and Judas had killed himself. He came to ten who were gathered in the room there for the fear of the Jews and He appeared to them on Resurrection Sunday and He breathed on them. And He said, receive the Holy Spirit.

But wait until the Holy Spirit is poured out upon you. You ever wonder about that? They had the Holy Spirit, but they were to wait until He was poured out in power.

Little green barley shoot. Anticipating the mighty rushing wind that completed that. Do you see the fulfillment?

They had the Holy Spirit in embryo, if you like. They were later on the day of Pentecost saturated with His empowerment. That's the second of the three great festivals.

The third was tabernacles or booths. And it was also called in-gathering. And that suggests to you what it was about.

It too was an agricultural festival. This was the in-gathering at the end of the autumn growing season. The big one.

The gathering in of all of the harvest at the end of the season. In many ways, it corresponded to our Thanksgiving service here in America. As a matter of fact, the pilgrims thought that what they were celebrating in that first Thanksgiving was the Feast of Tabernacles.

Don't know if you knew that. I didn't until an hour ago. What was interesting about the Feast of Tabernacles, and the reason that it was given its name, was that the people of Israel were commanded to come from wherever they lived to the city of Jerusalem, and there to construct little temporary dwelling places, booths, or tents, or tabernacles, little shelters, temporary shelters, and to live in them for the seven days of the Feast.

Why? As a reminder that after the Exodus, there was a whole generation of people who spent 40 years in the wilderness as nomads, sojourners, who didn't have a permanent dwelling place 40 years wandering and living in booths or tabernacles. I wonder if you get the poignancy of that.

Here they are in Israel, celebrating the harvest, thanking God for this abundance of His crops, and yet in the very midst of celebrating the harvest, they're reminding themselves of a time in which there was no harvest, of a time of wilderness wandering, when they had no place to dwell, no crops to plant, no harvest to bring in. Oh yes, God took care of them in that wilderness experience marvelously. Manna from heaven, water from the flinty rock, miraculous provision.

It says that even their shoes didn't wear out for 40 years. But you see, the wilderness wandering was never part of God's intention for them. That wasn't his highest and best.

Should have taken about 9 to 11 days to get from Egypt into the land of Canaan. Funny thing happened on the way to the promised land. They didn't believe it.

They spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness. As wonderful as his provision was during that whole generation of wandering, as wonderful as his provision was, getting in was the point. The whole point of the Exodus was not just to leave Egypt behind, but it was to come into the land of promise.

Getting home was the point. If you were to ask an ancient Jew, which of those three festivals was the most important, he'd look at you with a very strange expression on his face. He'd say, you can't separate them from each other.

The Passover anticipates Pentecost. Pentecost anticipates tabernacles. First fruits says there's more to come.

They're all tied together. It's a three-fold celebration of God's deliverance and His destiny. He delivered us for a purpose.

The purpose was to enjoy the land of promise, the land of plenty with God in our midst. And that's what it's all about. So you can't separate them.

Put it to you this way, that apart from the completion of tabernacles, the rest of it is strangely incomplete. Do you see what I'm saying? What I can tell you is that of the three, tabernacles was far and away the biggest bash.

I mean, that was a party, friends. You can read about it in Numbers 29, how they were commanded to celebrate this harvest festival. In addition to bringing in the crops, they were to kill 191 animals.

That's 191 courses, okay? And each one of them with appropriate cakes and pastries and appropriate drink offerings. In fact, it was such a celebration, it took an eighth day just to wind down.

But, the curious thing about all of this is that God gave explicit, detailed instructions, not once, but repeatedly, explicit, detailed instructions about how to celebrate this Feast of Tabernacles long before they ever got there. Long before they got into the land, during that period in the wilderness, God was telling them how to celebrate harvest when there is no harvest. While they're still nomads, He's telling them how to celebrate the fact that they're no longer nomads.

When they're still depending on the manna from heaven and have no feasting, He's telling them how to feast and to remember as they do so that time of wilderness wandering. Isn't that strange? Detailed instructions.

And he says, don't forget that you once were nomads to people who are still nomads. Well, what's the Christian significance of all that? And why are we celebrating this day?

I hope it's obvious to you. We too are people with a destiny. We've been delivered from sin, from the world, the flesh, and the devil.

We've been saved by the blood of the Lamb. Praise God. We've experienced something of the anointing and the empowering of His Spirit so that we can fulfill the Great Commission.

Praise God. But that's not what it's all about. What it's about is coming into that kingdom that lasts forever and enjoying the presence of God in a way that we've only barely tasted.

We've been delivered for a destiny. He shall come again in glory to judge the quick and the dead. And His kingdom will have no end.

Even so, come Lord Jesus. That's what it's all about. The book of Hebrews says that here were strangers and exiles.

and our true citizenship is in the heavenlies. The book of Ephesians says, as a matter of fact, we're no longer strangers and sojourners if you understand it correctly because we are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God. Jesus said, I go to prepare a place for you and if I go, I will surely come again and take you to myself that where I am, you may be also.

We celebrate this feast of tabernacles in anticipation of that great harvest of souls, harvest of lives, bringing in the full number of those who should be saved and live in the presence of God under the Lordship of Jesus forevermore. I don't know too much about what that's going to be like. I do know that when we get there, we'll remember these present days as a kind of wilderness experience.

In which we knew the provision of God, miracles of God, but we weren't home yet. I learned a little chorus when I was a teenager. This world is not my home.

I'm just a passing through. If heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do? The angels beckon me from heaven's open door and I can't be at home in this world anymore.

As good as the very best of this life has ever been, it's not even worth comparing with the glory that's to be ours when the sons and daughters of God are revealed and come into their own. Are you ready for that? I wonder if you are.

I wonder if you're really ready for heaven. If you're not, it would be a good idea to get ready. Because it's coming.

Jesus said, you don't know when. Might be at noonday, might be at evening, might be in the morning. It will come when you least expect it.

I am coming back. might be very soon. Might be right around the corner.

St. John wrote, Little children, abide in Him so that when He appears we may have confidence and not shrink from Him in shame at His coming. Don't shrink from Him in shame. Get ready for the party.

He's coming soon. Amen. Amen.