We grew up believing that the feast was a joyous time. A time that pictured the millennium and the righteous reign of Christ on Earth. And having 15,000 people to celebrate the feast with, one week a year when you “came out of the world”, and were dwelling among those of like mind – a time to recharge and celebrate what each other learned about God all year, and to share one tenth of your year’s labor with each other – these things made it very easy to picture the millennium. We don’t have that today, and probably never will again.

That’s not a cosmic accident. Because you see, as much fun as that feast was… it was only partly what God intended. Granted, the Bible does say that you should rejoice at the feast, and forbid fasting, and generally paints a fun picture of it – but the point that everyone misses today is that He meant for you to do that… while in adversity.

If you strip away all the encrusted doctrines and traditions and feelings from 70 years of modern feast observance and go back to the bare-bones-Bible-definition, there is only ONE meaning – one, mind you – in the ENTIRE Bible, that explains what the feasts represent. No, it isn’t the Millennium. The Bible never even hints at that meaning – the Church made that one up. No, this is the Biblical explanation of WHY we keep the feasts:

Deuteronomy 16:3 Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life.

Unleavened bread is a time to eat the bread of AFFLICTION, because you came out of Egypt in haste – without good fluffy bread in comfy Sheraton rooms, but with your belongings hastily stuffed into a sack and running it and your flocks out of Egypt! But what about Pentecost?

Verses 10-12 And thou shalt keep the feast of weeks unto the LORD thy God … And thou shalt rejoice before the LORD thy God … And thou shalt remember that thou wast a bondman in Egypt: and thou shalt observe and do these statutes.

Pentecost again points back to you being a BONDMAN in Egypt – a time to remember that you were a SLAVE! But what about Tabernacles? Surely IT pictures the millennium!

Leviticus 23:40-43 And ye shall take you on the first day the boughs of goodly trees … and ye shall rejoice before the LORD your God seven days. … It shall be a statute for ever in your generations …Ye shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are Israelites born 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.

Tabernacles commemorated the time when Israel dwelt in BOOTHS. It was a commemoration of what HAD happened, not a picture of what WOULD happen. Of course, the principle of duality could – and does – apply to the future as well, but nothing can connect dwelling in booths (or tabernacles or tents or temporary dwellings) to the millennium. But the Bible does tell us the other meaning:

2 Corinthians 5:1-4 For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we GROAN, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven: … For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: …

We live in physical bodies. Bodies which live and die. They are temporary – fleeting. They are consumed as the moth and gone in a moment of cosmic time (Job 4:19). So it is not a stretch to call these bodies tabernacles – booths, in which our spirit dwells for now. The second, duality meaning of the feast of tabernacles is that it pictures this week in which we dwell in temporary dwellings – dwellings that can be blown away and consumed by wind or fire. So if Tabernacles pictures these two things – how do we feel in these tabernacles?

Paul talks about how all who are in these tabernacles GROAN, and we earnestly desire a BETTER house. So we should expect tabernacles be a time of GROANING about our tents, and desiring a BETTER house – a Holiday Inn, for instance.

Or take Israel – when they dwelt in tents for forty years… did they enjoy that? How did they feel, exactly, while they were in tabernacles?

Numbers 11:4-6 … and the children of Israel also wept again, and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish, which we did eat in Egypt freely; the cucumbers, and the melons, and the leeks, and the onions, and the garlick: But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.

They missed Egypt! They missed their foods from back home! And they were sick to DEATH of Manna! How about you – ever have trouble finding food in strange places at the feast that was healthy, not unclean, and edible? If you did, you fulfilled part of the symbol of Tabernacles! Did you groan and complain about it as the Israelites did? Then you fulfilled even more of the symbol – and, incidentally, failed the test at the same time!

For you see… that’s what these feasts are all about. Tests. And the Sabbath is no different. You probably didn’t know it, but the Sabbath pictures Egypt too…

Deuteronomy 5:14-15 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work … that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou. And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the LORD thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: THEREFORE the LORD thy God commanded thee to keep the sabbath day.

These days are days to remember time when things weren’t going as well as they do for us. See, we live in a pretty comfortable time. And we in our arrogance can look back on the Israelites and say “what dufuses! Why, they were eating bread that fell from the sky, and they STILL couldn’t have faith and believe that God would feed them??? Dunces!” – and the Sabbaths of God, weekly and yearly, are our chance to take the same test that they took.

Deuteronomy 8:2 And thou shalt remember all the way which the LORD thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to HUMBLE thee, and to PROVE thee, to KNOW what was IN THINE HEART, whether thou wouldest keep his commandments, OR NO.

We eat the Manna that falls from the sky. We have been delivered from Egypt, and seen the power of God working. We ARE those Israelites, and we ARE today wandering in the spiritual wilderness that their wanderings pictured. And we were commanded to keep the feasts so that we can be HUMBLED like they were! So that God can PROVE us like they were proved! And so God could KNOW WHAT IS IN OUR HEARTS!

But what will He find in those hearts, as we wander through a world that puts Egypt to shame? As we wander through the world, being chased from pillar to post by food and weather and money and circumstance, how do we react to it? Will it be like this:

Psalms 78:12, 17-18 Marvellous things did he in the sight of their fathers, in the land of Egypt … He divided the sea, and caused them to pass through; and he made the waters to stand as an heap. …[to make a long story short, he led them with cloud and fire, fed them water out of the rocks, made bread fall from the sky, etc…] … And they sinned yet more against him by provoking the most High in the wilderness. And they tempted God in their heart by asking meat for their lust.

They weren’t content with all that, and they didn’t believe God could do any more!

Verses 19-20 Yea, they spake against God; they said, Can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold, he smote the rock, that the waters gushed out, and the streams overflowed; can he give bread also? can he provide flesh for his people?

Can God find Mexican restaurants without lard at the feast? Can He find hotels with hot water in Mexico?

Verses 22-24 Because they believed not in God, and trusted not in his salvation: Though he had commanded the clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven, And had rained down manna upon them to eat, and had given them of the corn of heaven.

How many times have we seen Him do that! And yet we provoke Him by worrying about getting sick at the feast, or finding food at the feast, or finding places to stay, or being bored, or any number of other petty problems – just as they did.

Verses 40-43, 55 How oft did they provoke him in the wilderness, and grieve him in the desert! Yea, they turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel. They remembered not his hand, nor the day when he delivered them from the enemy. How he had wrought his signs in Egypt… He cast out the heathen also before them, and divided them an inheritance by line, and made the tribes of Israel to dwell in their tents.

And after all these things, God made Israel dwell in tents – guiding, feeding, and taking care of them the whole way, despite their grumblings the whole way. And what did they do in those tabernacles?

Deuteronomy 1:27 And ye murmured in your tents, and said, Because the LORD hated us, he hath brought us forth out of the land of Egypt, to deliver us into the hand of the Amorites, to destroy us.

Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. That pictured the adult life span of a Spiritual Israelite – I.E., us from Baptism to old age. And if you celebrate the feast as God commanded, and remember the wanderings in Egypt, and being slaves, and being afflicted, you cannot HELP but be afflicted at the feast. Trying to find food in the midst of a nation that doesn’t care about unclean foods or white flour, for instance. Trying to slip through the cracks in a world that is completely contrary to everything you believe.

This will make you feel exactly like Israel did. It will make you HATE the feasts. Make you MURMUR against God and say “WHY did God make us do this! WHY must they be at harvest time, when I have the most to do at home!” But the challenge – and this is the whole point of the feasts – is to rise above that adversity and have faith that God will sort it out. And rejoice ANYWAY.

Nehemiah 8:17 And all the congregation of them that were come again out of the captivity made booths, and sat under the booths: for since the days of Jeshua the son of Nun unto that day had not the children of Israel done so. And there was very great gladness.

These people had spent the last 50 years in Babylon, where most of the nation still was there. They were being afflicted by various groups writing letters to the king of Persia to try and get their work on the city stopped. They had gone off and married native wives again and were off after other gods once again. People were still dwelling in tents and hadn’t built houses yet. But despite all that, they put those things aside and ENJOYED the fact that they were not in slavery anymore. That God had delivered them from Egypt (and Babylon, in this case).

Verses 18 Also day by day, from the first day unto the last day, he read in the book of the law of God. And they kept the feast seven days; and on the eighth day was a solemn assembly, according unto the manner.

They did no more than to read the law, eat, and talk, but that was enough because they remembered what life used to be like and appreciated what they had – adversity or not, it was the feast of God.

Deuteronomy 1:33 Who went in the way before you, to search you out a place to pitch your tents in, in fire by night, to shew you by what way ye should go, and in a cloud by day.

God has always done this for people who had faith that He would – and sometimes even for rebellious people who didn’t. He always will. But God takes it personally when you murmur against Him, and gripe about how you hate His nasty Manna. God’s spirit may be the only thing we take with us or the only thing we eat at the feast – because it was the only thing the Israelites had.

Numbers 11:6 But now our soul is dried away: there is nothing at all, beside this manna, before our eyes.

They HATED Manna. They wanted something ELSE to eat. A good steak, or watermelon, or SOMETHING. And God took that pretty personally, just as He will if you despise the spiritual Manna which may be all you get for this feast to eat. And if you have to fast for seven days on that alone, you should STILL rejoice. And trust God to make the feast good, if you do your part.

Deuteronomy 16:15 Seven days shalt thou keep a solemn feast unto the LORD thy God in the place which the LORD shall choose: because the LORD thy God shall bless thee in all thine increase, and in all the works of thine hands, therefore thou shalt surely rejoice.

We have built up improper expectations for the feast. It isn’t always going to be filled with thousands of people of like mind – and when it is, it rather misses the point of wandering in the wilderness. So really, it SHOULDN’T be that, for it only hurts people who get used to that and can’t live without it.

Israel did not enjoy the wandering in the wilderness because of the hardships – but they SHOULD have enjoyed it because God had delivered them from slavery and was leading them into the promised land. We do not enjoy wandering through Arkansas or Ecuador for the feasts because of the hardships… but we SHOULD enjoy the fact that we used to be blind like the rest of the world, and now have been delivered from slavery and are being led towards the promised land.

That is, we are being led there IF we don’t balk and show God that despite the hundreds of answers to prayer we’ve all seen, and the tons of blessings we even now have… that we still don’t believe He will do what He says.

And that promised land is there only for those who learn to make the best out of situations they don’t like that aren’t that comfortable – and who rejoice in spite of that.

Hebrews 4:2 For unto us was the gospel preached, as well as unto them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it.

The feasts are our chance to pass the test that Israel failed. We will only pass that test if the word we receive is mixed with faith. Our faith.

Philippians 4:11-12 (NKJV) Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.

Don’t like wandering in the wilderness? Deal with it. And I’d better not hear any murmuring.