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Let us begin this evening, without further ado, by reading from Leviticus twenty three. Leviticus twenty three, starting again at verse fifteen. And you shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that you bought the sheaf of the wave offering, seven Sabbaths shall there be complete, even unto the morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall ye number fifty days. And you shall offer a new meal offering unto the Lord. You shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two-tenths parts of an ephah.
They shall be of fine flour. They shall be baconed with leaven for first fruits unto the Lord. Verse twenty. And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the first fruits for a wave offering before the Lord with the two lambs. They shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. You shall make proclamation on the self-same day. They shall be in holy convocation unto you. You shall do no servile work. It is a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generation. When you reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt thou gather the gleaning of thy harvest.
Thou shalt leave them for the poor and for the stranger. I am the Lord your God. The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, in the seventh month, in the first day of the month shall be a solemn rest unto you, a memorial of blowing of trumpets and holy convocation. Ye shall do no servile work, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. The Lord spake unto Moses, saying, how be it, on the tenth day of this seventh month is a- is the day of atonement. It shall be unto you an holy convocation, and ye shall afflict your souls, and ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord.
And you shall do no manner of work in that same day, for it is a day of atonement to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. For whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off from his people. And whatsoever soul it be that doeth any manner of work in that same day, that soul will I destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work. It is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It shall be unto you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls in the ninth day of the month at even, from even unto even shall you keep your sabbath.
And the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of the seventh month is the feast of tabernacles for seven days unto the Lord. On the first day shall be in holy convocation, you shall do no servile work. Seven days ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. On the eighth day shall be in holy convocation unto you. And ye shall offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. It is a solemn assembly, ye shall do no servile work. Verse 39. How be it on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruits of the land, ye shall keep the feast of the Lord seven days.
On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. And you shall take you on the first day the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. You shall keep it a feast unto the Lord seven days in the year. It is a statute forever in your generations. You shall keep it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths seven days. All that are home born in Israel shall dwell in booths, that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.
I am the Lord your God. Moses declared unto the children of Israel the set feasts of the Lord. And may he likewise to us declare their meaning as we study them this evening. When we broke off our study on Tuesday last, we were considering the feast of Pentecost, and we began our consideration by reminding ourselves of that unique historic event that happened on that special day of Pentecost, fifty days after our Lord Jesus rose from the dead. In a word, we were considering the coming of the Holy Spirit, and we spent quite a while explaining to ourselves what is meant by that term, the coming of the Holy Spirit, his coming to reside here, his dwelling in human form, in the persons of those who trust the Savior, his permanent residence in them, until he shall bring them home to glory.
Tonight we must spend a while longer on this feast of Pentecost, because there are certain other important features about that early feast. Its special feature was the offering of the loaves, the two loaves of first fruits, along with their particular animal sacrifices. So let's, uh, refresh our memories again in what these, uh, first fruits were different from these first fruits. First fruits on the feast of Penti- uh, of first fruits was a sheaf of green corn.
The corn would have gone up, become green, the ear formed, but still green. A sheaf of it was taken and waved before the Lord. Seven weeks after that and a day, the corn in the field would have gone brown, ready for the harvest, no longer green but brown, and it would be reaped and thrashed and milled and turned into flour. But again, before the Israelites were a- allowed to eat any bread from that harvest corn, they had to take some of the flour, bake it into two loaves with leaven, and then offer those loaves as a wave offering before Jehovah.
We must concentrate on those two loaves for a moment, so as to get into our hearts both the fact and the significance of the fact of this particular, uh, first fruit offering, the two loaves made with leaven. But what do we make of it? Let's put the evidence together and then see if the New Testament knows anything about this at the spiritual level. First of all, then, the first fruits now consisted of two loaves, not just one. This lot of first fruits consisted of one sheep, a suitable emblem of our Lord Jesus Christ in person.
Now this consisted of two loaves. It was an offering of first fruits. It was waved before the Lord. And then we notice that in these loaves there were leaven. Now, whatever the expositors say about the use of leaven as a symbol in parables in the New Testament, it is undeniable that in the Old Testament, and among the Jews in particular, leaven, symbolically speaking, was regarded as a bad thing, perhaps because it promoted fermentation, but what forever what f- for whatever reason, the Jews regarded it as a bad thing, symbolically speaking.
They didn't mind it at the ordinary level. It increased their bread and made it taste much better than mother pride or sun quest or anything like those modern things. But at the spiritual level, at the symbolic level, it was regarded as a bad thing. So we have those four things to put together connected with the feast of Pentecost, two loaves made with leaven as first fruits waved before the Lord. And I want you now, if you will, to turn over to the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians and see whether or not the New Testament mirrors anything that could possibly be thought to correspond to that at the spiritual level.
On the day of Pentecost, the New Testament tells us, the Holy Spirit came down from heaven. And Romans chapter eight says of us who trust Christ that we have received the first fruits of the Spirit. That is, the Spirit constitutes for us the first fruits of the glorious inheritance that awaits us when the Lord shall come. In similar vein, the first epistle, uh, the first chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, the Ephesians and verse thirteen m and fourteen tells us that we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is in earnest of our inheritance unto the redemption of God's own possession, unto the praise of his glory.
So once more, the Holy Spirit fulfills for us this function. He is the first, the inheritance. He is the first fruit. He is the earnest of the inheritance for us. Having him, we have both a foretaste and a guarantee of that glorious full inheritance that awaits us. But it wouldn't do for us to be altogether selfish in our thinking, would it? Alas, we so often are. Right, children? Even when it comes to spiritual things, we put our own enjoyment first, our own feelings first. We will come to meetings when it pleases us.
We will study God's word if we get a kick out of it. We will pray if we experience certain rapturous delights. And we've got to be very careful, lest we descend into being purely selfish, even in our spirit. God needs us to enjoy them, of course, though, and the Holy Spirit has given us as a first fruits for us, as an earnest of an inheritance for us. But spare a thought, shall we not, for what the Holy Spirit has accomplished in us for God. What is God getting out of it? Anyway, let's ask the basic question.
Why did God save us? Why be saved? Now, you say, I got beyond thinking that he saved me merely to save me from the wrath to come. Oh, jolly good stuff. You say, I think God has made me to serve him. What do you mean? Well, to witness to others and get them saved. Oh, very good too. Let's hope God is blessing your, your t- your efforts. My brother, but what are you going to do when everybody has been saved? There aren't any more left to save. Will there any be any point then in being saved? Why are we saved?
What idea had God in his mind when he invented us anyway, when he created us, and when he redeemed us? What is all meant to be about? First chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians tells us of two of God's purposes, the one, so to speak, passive and the other active, and the first of them is found in verse four. and as we read it, we shall come across a little phrase that will s- make our memories begin to work. Listen to verse four again. Even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him.
Yes, a verse lower down will tell us in verse ten that it is the good purpose of God, with a view to the administration of the fullness of times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heaven and the things upon earth, and you as well. Yes. God has his active purpose. God's eye rolls towards the future and sees that coming age and all the glorious things that will be possible to do, and to do with the redeemed, and for the administration of that coming age, God is already drawing up his civil service list, and he has the one who shall head up the whole of the administration, namely Jesus Christ our Lord, and under him will be his redeemed people, trained and ready to engage with Christ in all those exciting and glorious tasks that God has in mind for the age to come.
But as well as those active tasks, the active side of God's purpose, there is this more passive one, and notice, will you, it comes first? His great purpose in saving us is that we should be before him. Well, let me ask you married men, because I'm ignorant on this score, but, um, please tell me, when you get a chance one of these days, why you married your wife. Was it to get someone good to, um, dig your garden?
Was it primarily because you had a house to to wallpaper, uh, and meals to get ready that you thought you better bring in some help here, uh, and, uh, get in some help to make your souffles? Primarily so? Be careful, your wife might be listening. Or was there something even higher than getting some help to do the garden and the cooking. Was there nothing in it that, uh, you married her and she married you so that you might be, she might be before you? There were days, weren't there, when nothing delighted you more just to sit there and look at her, that she was before you.
Yes, let's hope that are days like that now. That you're not content to have her all twenty four hours of the day in the garden or the kitchen, but there are moments when you say, woman, for any sake, come and sit down and let me talk to you. And even those who have not that great an exalted privilege know what it is to value in life, perhaps as much and perhaps more than mere activity. A friend before one. Of course, you can't talk that to Tommy, can you, when he's only ten years old. He was bored stiff sitting still and just speaking to somebody.
But mature folks find endless delight in having a someone before them that they can enjoy. For people are infinitely better than activity and certainly than things. Wonder of wonders, Almighty God, who was in need of nothing because he was perfect, chose deliberately to need us. And created us that he might have someone before him. To gratify and satisfy his heart and fill it with joy and interest him.
It was his tremendous compliment that he paid us in making us and redeeming us that we should be before him. Nor need we wait for the fulfillment of that great purpose. Yes, one of these days we shall be able to entertain God more than we entertain him now. Our conversation with God, if mine is anything to go by, is sorely limited. God, heal my, heal my arthritis. God, give me a good job. God, um, uh, guide my boy, help him to pass the the eleventh class, and all those things.
Rather limited conversation, isn't it, with which to engage the Almighty. One day we shall perhaps be able to entertain him in that fashion that he, uh, had in mind when he redeemed us. We don't have to wait. The coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost has already begun that great work, making it possible already here in this imperfect world, while yet we are beset with sin, that we should be before God even now, to the gratification of his pleasure.
I like to think of those loaves, leaven in them, yet wave before the Lord. With what pri- pride the old farmer in Israel reaped his corn and thought he'd made a good job of it, and milled it nice and fine, and regarded it fit to offer to his divine majesty. Dare I say it, with what pride does God Holy Spirit take men and women in their sins and bring them to Christ and get them forgiven and washed and cleansed and made holy, and then with infinite delight present them before God, that they should be before him.
There were two loaves, not just one. I wonder would, uh, Ephesians know anything about that. Let's read, shall we, uh, lower down then in verse thirteen, verse forty, uh, verse twelve. to the end that we should be unto the praise of his glory, we who had before hoped in Christ, in whom you all. So Paul is talking about two groups. We Jews, who all down the centuries had hoped in the coming Messiah, while as yet you Gentiles knew nothing about Messiah or his coming. So there's us, we Jews, who had before hoped in Christ. And then there is you too, the Gentiles, joined together.
Or look again in chapter two and verse eleven: Wherefore remember that aforetime, ye the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called uncircumcision by that which is called circumcision in the flesh made by hands, that you were at that time separate from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenant of the promise, having no hope, and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus, Jesus, ye that were once afar or far made, now in the blood of Christ, for he is our peace, who hath made both one and break down the little wall of petition, having abolished in his flesh and enmity even the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that he might create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace, and might reconcile them both in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the enmity thereby.
Verse nineteen: so then you are no more strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the same. You cannot read far into chapters two and three of the letter to the Ephesians, but what you will soon see in your mind's eye, that Paul is advancing around his study even while he's dictating the letter to his amanuensis. His heart is bursting with this glorious discovery that has been made. I'm sure you're so used to it now that it doesn't move you at all. Move Paul. It moved him because he had been brought up in a very, very narrow circle of Judaism, where in their mind Israel were God's chosen people.
That was true. And beyond that, they were scarce interested in anybody. The Gentiles were lost about it. What did they care? The Gentiles were unclean. What did they care? Bother them. The Gentiles were on their way to perdition. Well, let them go. We're saved, aren't we? We're the people of the Lord. And so spoke a vast majority in Judaism. Now, from time to time, it must have exercised some of the more thoughtful. Can this possibly be right? We, a tiny little nation, a few thousand odd in Palestine, with our relatives scattered here and there, amounting to a few million out of all the multi-miried million in the world.
Can it possibly be right that we are God's chosen people, and he's interested in nobody else? And for us is the salvation and nobody else. How could you believe a gospel like that? And then the great secret was revealed, and it had Paul dancing for joy. And the secret was what? Why, says Paul, that the Gentiles too to be fellow heirs. Oh, what a vastly bigger harvest than any anybody had dared to think. That now not merely Jew, but Gentiles in their millions might be gathered and harvested and brought together and presented to God.
The very size of it, the glory of it filled Paul's heart with joy. It was that that made him grab his sickle and run all the way around the empire trying to reap some of the harvest for God. How could the man sit still on his seed, content himself with a few thousand pious Jews in their synagogues in Jerusalem, when God had shown him this tremendous purpose for a harvest bigger than anybody had ever imagined. That the Gentiles too, along with Jew, two of them, Jew, Gentile, but uh, no longer two, made one in Christ.
And then we remember that you should be no longer strangers. Hard, isn't it? Don't blame me, for I didn't write it. The tuck just here, although Moses had got thus far describing what they had to do on the day of Pentecost, and just before he was going on to something else, he suddenly had a thought. He said, I, by the way, when you reap this harvest, you're not to reap every last grain of it, will you? If you drop some, some straws and some ears on the ground, well, leave them. And don't, uh, like a mean old miser, uh, be careful to reap even right into the most extreme corner.
Leave some. Leave it for the stranger. And yet that's as he's written in Ephesians, isn't it? When Ephesians comes to discuss the matter, the two those made one wave before the Lord for his joy and gladness, Gentile and Jew. And the Gentile no longer a stranger, no longer just picking up the odd bit that fell here and there, the crumbs that fell to the puppy dog under the table from the rich man's dinner party. No longer strangers, now brought in equally into all the wealth of God's inheritance.
We mustn't delay. But it must now become obvious to us, with the question of these two loves pointing forward to Jew and Gentile, it must be obvious to us that Pentecost likewise has a good deal to say as to how Jew and Gentile are no longer wa- uh, two but one, are joined in one body. I have not time to describe it in length. Now, this is a topic, as you know, that Saint Paul deals with in one Corinthians chapter twelve, when he informs us who trust the Savior that in one spirit we have all been baptized into one body, whether Jew or Greek.
It is a glorious fact. Let nobody rob you of it. It is a glorious fact, true of every believer. Let nobody persuade you that there are some folks that haven't been baptized with the Holy Spirit, if at least they are Christ. For every believer, in one spirit, baptized into one body, and have been made to drink of that one spirit. With that, we move on. We notice now the gap that ca- came in the yearly calendar of Israel from the conclusion of the harvest here, the offering of first fruits and the conclusion of the harvest, and the next cluster of feasts.
Note they are a cluster from the date on which they occurred, all in the seventh month, in the first three weeks, some following very closely after the others. First trumpets, then Day of Atonement, then tabernacles. Now we have already seen, so that we may save time and not repeat it, that even the Jewish prophets had been given to understand by God that the yearly feast of tabernacles in Israel had a prophetic significance. That when the Messiah came, God should make them a feast of fat things of wines on the lees, well refined.
There should come what the me- what the rabbis called the Messianic banquet. God would make the nations a banquet. And the wine of that feast would be passing good. He should wipe away tears, and death be swallowed up in victory. The feasts then that cluster around together here, leading finally to the great crescendo of the feast of Tabernacles, begin with the blowing of trumpets. As the silence of the summer, that is the silence on the ceremonial calendar, is suddenly broken by the blasts of the trumpets.
And Israel learns that the next cluster of feasts is about to begin. They are to reap the second harvest, the next stage in the one harvest, if you like, with all its tremendous joy and sense of fulfillment. Trumpets, notice, if you please, not just one trumpet. God isn't hard up for an orchestra. It shall be trumpets, not just one final trumpet. Tonight we are to concentrate, however, on this as it particularly concerns Israel.
Trumpet call for the assembling of Israel and her preparation to meet her Lord. Leading, as you see, on into the day of Atonement. But here we strike a difficulty. Many there are who have contemplated the feasts of the Lord, and at first sight they have said, yes, it does seem as if they were meant to be prophetic. You know, it is interesting, isn't it? Passover followed by First Fruits, well, yes, and followed by Pentecost. Thus far, it seems to be prophetic, and if you're going to say trumpets has got something to do with the Lord's coming, well, that seems also to, uh, be in the right order.
But then they say you strike an impossible difficulty. Look at that Day of Atonement. Huh. There? Are you going to say the Day of Atonement connected with the coming of the Lord? Surely every Sunday school scholar knows that atonement was made at our Lord's first coming at Calvary. Surely you're not going to say this is prophetic here, and if you are, then is it not out of order? Well, let's get it quite clear in our heads that our Lord is never going to die again. The Epistle to the Hebrews is witnessed that whereas in Israel the atonement came round every year, and every year their sins were legally raked up again before the court of God, and there was a remembrance made again of sin, and therefore they never had a conscience perfect.
Christ, by contrast, has offered one sacrifice for sin forever and sat down, so as we no longer need any other sacrifices beside his, nor do we need to offer his sacrifice again. Well, if that is so, if the sacrifice of Christ is now finished and over and happened at Calvary, what shall we say of this Day of Atonement here? Well, we should say two things. Notice, please, if you don't mind, that this is Day of Atonement and not Passover. And then will you please remember that in the Day of Atonement ceremony, there is not just the simple ceremony of offering a sacrifice on the altar.
That ceremony was a very detailed and involved thing. And some part of that ceremony was indeed fulfilled when Christ died on Calvary. Yet another part of that ceremony was fulfilled when our Lord Jesus Christ entered heaven. But there is a very notable part of the ceremony of the Day of Atonement that has not yet been fulfilled at all. Let me remind you of the central features of the ceremony of the Day of Atonement. On that day, amongst many other things, the high priest came out to the court, to the big altar that stood in the court, in full view of the assembled nation.
And there solemnly the elders laid their hands upon the head of a goat, and it was their sin offering, and they confessed their sins, and the goat was slain, and its blood was sh- taken. There in the forecourt, in the sight of everybody. But the next thing was that the high priest took that blood, and disappearing from the view of the nation, he entered into the holiest of all, as he did on this occasion and on this occasion only, there to present that blood in the divine presence, there to appear in the presence of God on behalf of his nation.
Having sprinkled that blood before and on the mercy seat in solemn fashion, he then operated the third part of this ceremony, and leaving the divine presence, he came out once more into the view of the people. He appeared the second time. And when he appeared the second time, he had to take another goat, the scapegoat, and offer that as a sin offering. The poor man's work was scarcely ever done. There were then three appearances, appearing in the court for the slaying of the goat and the shedding of its blood, the appearing in the divine presence to present that blood before God, and the third time as he appeared out again in the court in front of all the people to offer another sacrifice for sin, the scapegoat.
When the writer to the Hebrews interprets that Old Testament picture for us, he observes that there is in the work of Christ a something that corresponds to all those three appearances. He appeared, says the writer in Hebrews chapter nine and towards the end. He appeared, that is, he appeared in this world. He appeared on the stage of the earth, for this thing wasn't done in a corner. He appeared at Calvary, appeared before kings and before the nations. He appeared in order to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself.
That thank God has been done, finished, will never be need to be repeated. But that wasn't the end of it, was it? Where is he now, you may ask? Well, says that same writer, now he appears in the presence of God for us. He has gone in as our first fruits. He has gone in as our forerunner. He not only appears there, but he appears there for us. He has entered in by his own blood. That thing God has been fulfilled. He is there now. Ah, but there's one bit that hasn't been fulfilled.
The ancient high priest then came out again. He appeared the second time in the forecourt, in the gaze of all the people, and so shall our Lord. For we wait for him. He shall appear the second time. And when he appears the second time, to complete the picture of that day of atonement sacrifice in Israel, when he appears the second time, he shall not take another goat. He shall not take a sin offering and a scapegoat, gloriously different from Aaron. When he appears the second time, he shall appear apart from any more sin offerings.
But he shall appear the second time unto salvation, and he shall take us home. The trumpet shall sound, and the dead in Christ shall be raised, and we which are alive again shall be changed, and we shall be caught up with him at the sound of that glorious trumpet to meet the Lord in the air. Glorious, isn't it? And it hasn't yet been fulfilled, that third bit of the Day of Atonement, but it will be as sure as the other two pieces have been fulfilled. And when shall that third bit be fulfilled?
My dear good brother and sister, when the trumpet sounds, of course, he shall appear a second time without sin unto salvation. But you may have noticed when we read in Leviticus twenty three, in the instructions for the yearly celebration of this Day of Atonement, Leviticus twenty three does not mention all the many details of the sacrifices. It has already described them at length in chapter 16 of the book. It doesn't need to repeat, but it repeats one feature and repeats it again and again and again and again and again.
Leviticus twenty three, describing this feast, repeats the feature that on this day Israel were to afflict their souls. He that didn't afflict his soul should be cut off. The Day of Atonement is the most solemn feast in all the Jewish yearly calendar, and to this day, it is for them a day of penitence, a day of examination, a day of confession of their sins. And the services in the synagogue on Day of Atonement has come round, and still to this present, even here in Belfast, Jews afflict their soul.
For what purpose? Ah, they do it as the ancient ceremony commanded. But as yet, their eyes have seen no further and prophetic significance in it, except for some of their prophets. Let's look again at what Zechariah chapter twelve has to tell us. Zechariah chapter twelve, Prophecy of what shall yet be. Zechariah chapter twelve.
The prophet now, by the Spirit of God, is peering off into the future. And if it were not too simple an observation, I should remind you that chapter twelve comes before chapter fourteen. And it is Zechariah chapter fourteen that talks to us about the glorious celebration of Feast of Tabernacles that shall one day come. We read it together the other night. How that in that day, chapter fourteen, verse sixteen, everyone that is left of all the nations which came against Jerusalem shall go up from year to year to worship the King, the Lord of hosts, and to keep the feast of tabernacles. So it shall be. And what shall be the preliminary preparations for a glorious universal celebration of the feast of tabernacles?
What shall be the preparation? Well, chapter twelve of Zechariah tells us, verse nine: and it shall come to pass in that day, when the Lord defends Jerusalem, that is, it shall come to pass in that day that I will seek to destroy all the nations that come against Jerusalem. Well, what day is this? Come on now, you historicists, tell us what day this is. AD seventy perhaps? When the Romans came against Jerusalem, did God seek to destroy them? Roman Empire lasted a long while beyond, uh, AD seventy.
All right then, AD hundred and thirty one, two, and three, during during the Bar Kokhba revolt, when the Romans eventually came, not only razed the city, but turned it into a Gentile city. Did the Lord seek to destroy the Gentiles then? And if he didn't do it then, then when has he done it? When has he defended Jerusalem in all those years and destroyed the nations that came against her? Hasn't done it yet, has he? Not to my knowledge, at any rate. Yet here stands the prophecy that one day nations shall come against Jerusalem, and in that day the Lord will seek to destroy those nations.
He shall indeed. Chapter fourteen explains his feet shall stand in the Mount of Olives on that day. This is the great day of the Lord's wrath, when he comes in flaming fire to take vengeance on them that know not God and obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. The beast shall be taken, and the false prophet to boot, and then the farriest deceptions of the nations shall be caused to cease. And he says, therefore, talking of that day, I will pour out upon the house of David and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and supplication, and they shall look on me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him as one that mourneth for his only son, and shall be in bitterness for him as one that is in bitterness for his firstborn.
In that day there shall be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadrad-Rimmon in the valley of Megiddo. Ah yes, a great day of mourning, when Israel shall afflict their souls before the Lord, they shall look on him whom they have pierced, and with inexpressible contrition, they shall say, as Isaiah long since said, we esteemed him stricken of God and afflicted, but the fact was he was wounded for our transgression.
Oh, what a day it shall be. When, as Saint Paul has prophesied, Israel shall be restored. There shall come forth a deliverer out of Zion, and he shall turn away iniquity from Jacob. What a day of harvest that will be. Paul had his feet very well upon the earth. Sometimes he had them in the Mediterranean as well, shipwrecked, cold, hungry, miserable, tired, broken, beaten black and blue, left for dead, and many a time in a prison, and many a time broken-hearted with the behavior of his converts towards himself.
And in spite of it, there were moments when Paul's soul was lifted up in ecstasy and delight, that burst all the chains of his prisons and the hurts and wounds and cutting remarks of his converts and those troublesome churches, and lifted up his soul with the very glory in the expectation of what God should do. He saw this mighty harvest. He saw the beginning of it here. He was part of the reaping. But even as he reaped, his eyes were on a more distant future. Says he in the Epistle to the Romans, do you know, can you not see God's wisdom?
He hasn't cast off his ancient people, but in the wisdom of God, their fall has held forward this harvest, and their fall, therefore, has led to the blessing of the Gentiles. It has become the riches of the world. But if their loss is the riches of the world, how much more their full- fullness? For if the casting away of them is the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but veritable life from the dead? Think of that harvest.
Oh, God isn't finished yet. God hasn't gone bankrupt for ideas. God's cause is not going down the drain to peter out in one miserable whimper. There is the second stage of the harvest yet. How glorious it shall be. Measure it, if you can, what the casting away of Israel has meant in terms of the salvation of millions of Gentiles, and then multiply it how many times you like. What shall the receiving of them from the dead from again be, but veritable life from the dead. Of course it shall give way to the feast of Tabernacles.
And shall forget their groans and tears and sighs and difficulties, and should put on their holiday best and go camping with God for the sheer delight of it. Hm. Sometimes, once a year, we cast off our kind of prison clothes, don't we, that we have to wear when we go to work to look smart. And for a moment we cast off those rigid routines of up at half past seven and cook the egg by eight and husband and children out to school by nine and then lunch and then everything else.
We cast that off. We go out in our caravan or tent, and we live more like, uh, nature intended we should. And then we come back again, don't we? Yes. And the Jews did eat once a year at God's, uh, command. Felt in that week a certain freedom and liberty and release that they knew not all the year. But it always ended, and they went back. Ah, there's coming a day when it shall not end, my brother. The disciplines even of the redeemed that sin has made necessary shall be passed.
It will be the holiday mood with God, living for the sheer joy of it, doing things for the sheer love of doing them. It will be holiday with God. Israel for a week, lived in booths, and they were then to remember and look back how their ancient ancestors came out of Egypt, and God made them live in tents and booths as they journeyed across the Sinai Peninsula to their inheritance. Ah, what days they were. And some had lost heart, some had given up, and some had concluded because the journey across the wilderness was long, that there wasn't an inheritance to go to anyway, and some of them had gone back to Egypt.
Some had persevered and come through. They had to remember. We shall too, can't we? As from those distant peaks, we shall look back on life's journey and pilgrimage, and then smiling over what now were problems and rejoicing over what were heartbreaks, we shall understand why God led us that way.
And we shall say too, remember that time in Finicky Hall, that prayer meeting? Oh, something happened that day when God met us, and we received new strength to journey on, and now we're here. Ah yes, in Israel they met us in their booths for a whole seven days. And they liked it so much that God gave them permission to have an eighth as well. Seven and then eight. Oh yes, there is a millennium coming. We shall keep that age, and when it's done, ah, there will be a glorious eighth day that never, never ends.
The program is this, that when the Lord comes, for us in particular, he shall raise up out of the dead, the living, the dead saints, he shall change the living ones, we shall be caught up together to meet him in the air. And then, not now, my brother, then, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Think true now indeed. Oh no. Death is still a defeat. We don't notice it so much, do we, when some loved one of ninety-seven and a half passes away.
We say to ourselves, ah well, sleep isn't the highest form of life, but when kiddies get tired and beyond themselves, well, then sleep is no disaster, is it? When we lay our elderly loved ones to rest, we comfort our hearts thus. Sleep isn't the highest form of life, but it ain't a disaster. Asleep in Jesus until the Lord comes. When death attacks a man in his prime, a youth or a fair maid, ah, what an ugly thing it still is. What a defeat. Don't you make the wound worse by telling sorrowing loved ones that they're supposed to have a victory?
Now let them cry. It is a defeat. Although that battle be lost, the war wouldn't be lost. But the Lord comes, and he shall raise the dead and change the living, and when this mortal has put on immortality and the corruptible has put on incorruptibility, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death swallowed up in victory. That's what happened when the Lord. And he shall reign, and he shall reign until he has done something more wonderful still, until the last enemy death is put completely beneath his feet.
Not swallowed up and made to appear insignificant because of the victory that has ensued, abolished altogether. There are two temporary institutions, one on each side of the great veil, are there not? On our side, we call it death. On the other side, they call it Hades. Or at least we call it Hades, but it is on the other side. Death and Hades, the two counterparts, one this side, one the other side of the great veil. But they are only temporary institutions. One day, Christ shall abolish both, and those temporary institutions give way to the eternal.
Oh, what a future. We're not there yet, though, are we? I mustn't let you go without reminding you of something. The Israelites kept their feasts, and they came at last to tabernacles, and they kept all seven days, and then they kept the eighth day, and then, of course, quite rightly, they went home. But they hadn't arrived yet, had they? No, no, not in Israel's day. They hadn't arrived, why, poor dear souls, they didn't even know what we know. They were standing, so to speak, in the spiritual chart here somewhere, or even here. They went home, and little by little their prophets began to tell them, do you know, glorious as these things are, they are only shadows of something bigger to come.
But how few got that idea into their heads. Alas, alas, as the centuries went by, these feasts developed simply into holidays and nothing more, or scarcely anything more. They added extra things to make them more attractive still at this tabernacle feast. They added, among other things, this ceremony that they went down to the, the Siloam, and they brought up a golden pitcher of water. Every day they poured it at the base of the altar, and on the last day of the feast they poured it out twice. And they lit their oil lamps too in the women's quarters in the temple, and this was to remind them that in the wilderness, when their fathers lived in tents, God opened the rock and poured them out water.
It was to remind them that in their journeyings God went before in the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire by night, as Israel journeyed. And it was to remind them too, the farmers among them, that by this time in the year, the ground was as hard as iron. And if there was going to be a harvest next year, they would need some rain. And if God didn't send it, there would be no sowing. And if there were no sowing, there never would be a harvest. They poured out the water, memory of the past and prayer for the future. They lit their lights. Oh, they looked pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty lights in Jerusalem against the inky black sky.
It was also fairy light. Those little lights got soon lost in the darkness. Then there was that other darkness, the darkness that lay over multitudes of nations that sat in paganism, crude and cruel. How many of them saw it? Alas, how many were content just with their outward ceremonies and forgot that they hadn't yet arrived at all God had for them.
And into their feast of tabernacles one year came Christ, and John tells us of it in John chapter seven and eight. And he saw all the ceremonies, and he saw the lights, and he saw the water. Ha. Ah. But all. oh, how far from arriving they were. Scarce few of them knew what it meant to be born again. How few really understood the symbolism, even of the sacrifices. How few were ready for Messiah. How few had any concern for the spread of God's gospel among the Gentiles.
And there came the last day of the feast, and they had poured the water, and they were shaking their branches, the lilacs, as they call them. And as the last bit of water came at the bottom of the altar, they shouted and they cried and they shook their lilacs and they said, Save our Lord who besets thee. And as the sound died down, a voice was heard over the temple concourse. If any man thirsts, let him come to me and drink, and out of his inward parts will flow rivers of living water. I am the light of the world.
I can cast light on the real problem of guilt and offer you freedom from condemnation. I can cast light on the problem of deliverance from the power of sin in your daily living. I can cast light over and past the grave itself, for he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness but have the light of life. And I said, well, Caiaphas was furious, furious. Lady, that young man from Nazareth has gone beyond himself this time, he told his fellow counselors.
I'm afraid now he, he, he's gone beyond everything. We shall have to, uh, get rid of him. No. You just imagine the impotence when you and I, Anas, we put on the biggest show in all the year. Look how hard we practiced to intone those psalms. I mean, we put on the biggest show. I think Des get up and suggest that when we've done the best we can by way of the ceremony in the liturgy, there might be some people that were not satisfied yet. They went home to plot his death. And multitudes went home from their booths and packed them up for that year and settled back comfortably on their divans in their settled houses, and that was that, and that's the last I thought of it.
And Jesus went to the Mount of Olives, hadn't got a house to go to anyhow. But how could he settle down in a world like this and pretend they had arrived? Glad he didn't settle down, aren't you? I'm glad his eye went out and begone to the Gentiles and even to Belfast and saw me, and gave me a chance of being in that great harvest home.
And you glad to? Then there's a moral to the tale, isn't it? We're standing here, my friends. Who knows? I don't know how near we are to the trumpets going off, but we're standing about here. It's glorious now to see the map, isn't it? It's been fulfilled this much, you know. Once it was all prophecy, now it has been fulfilled right up to, right up to, right up to there somewhere. The rest is going to be fulfilled, but we're not there yet, are we? You're not the saint you want to be, brother, are you yet? You don't know all about God's word that you'd like to yet, do you?
You're doing a glorious work for the Lord in your evangelism. You're not content with it, are you? You've not just settled down for the round of meetings, have you? Surely, by God's grace, with the harvest in view, you're pressing on a pilgrim until you hear the trumpet sound and God move in his sickles to begin the last stage of the inheritance. The Lord bless his word to us all, for his name's sake, shall we pray.
O God, we do praise thee from our, from our hearts, for the wonderful prospect that thou hast before us. Glorious as it is, yet we are persuaded that we do see but a little of thy ways and through a glass darker. But we praise thee for that day when we shall see thee face to face. We are assured that thou shalt not be ashamed then to be called our God. Thou hast prepared for us a city. Thou wilt surprise us with raptures of joy and glad laughter of surprise. For the glories and blessings that thou hast stored up for us beyond all our imagining.
And all for the joy and hope thou has given us, even for this sorry world, that Christ shall yet come. O God, we pray, as thou hast opened our eyes and hearts to begin to enter into thy plans and purposes, and given us already thy spirit and earnest of our inheritance in our hearts, help us in our day, Lord, not to settle down content. Oh, help us to rise to the privilege of being before thee, that even now in our spiritual babyhood yet we might mean something to thee and learn to begin to converse intelligently with thee.
And save us, Lord, in all our right necessary routine from becoming content. Let along with our contentment and thankfulness stir up within us that un- that holy unrest that shall allow us never to settle, but ever to be progressing by thy grace until the Lord come and for us eternity begin. Bless this church, as we thank thee for it and all its work. Bless its elders, bless its deacons, bless all who serve in it, and every member we beseech thee, and increase its joy in the Lord and its light of testimony.
We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Uh. Amen.
