34. The First Day of Tabernacles
© Daniel Yordy – 2019
Tabernacles is God dwelling among humans, revealing Himself through their love for one another – God tabernacling among us, and we tabernacling together inside of God – the full incarnation of God through His Body, a family of humans – Christ Community.
The Feast of Tabernacles has three parts, the first Day, a Sabbath, the six in-between days of dwelling in booths, and the final day, the Great Day of the Feast, also a Sabbath. In one place Moses states that the Feast is seven days. From that point of view, then, the final Sabbath, that is, the eighth day, is the first day of a brand-new universe in outward appearance.
Tabernacles is all things become as God speaks – before the resurrection of our bodies.
We know what the First Day of Tabernacles means because of what happened on that specific day in the dedication of Solomon’s temple on October 15, 972 BC. What happened on that day is recorded twice in the Old Testament, in 1 Kings 8 and in 2 Chronicles 5.
And we know the fulfillment in the Church of this First Day of Tabernacles by reading Paul’s letter to the Ephesians – the completion of the fulness of Christ, the Church which is His body, the fulness of Christ who fills all inside of all – being built together as a dwelling place of God in the Spirit – filled with all the fullness of God.
The house of the Lord was filled with a cloud, so that the priests could not continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God (2 Chronicles 5:13-14).
Let me define that experience about to come upon us along with millions of other Spirit-filled believers in Jesus very soon. I am convinced this experience will happen on one day, the day of our calendar that God considers to be, in HIS count of Days, as the fifteenth day of the seventh month.
In that one moment we will KNOW that God Himself, Father in Person, IS all of our connections together, that His love is shed abroad in every heart and that He, in ordering our every step embedded inside of His love is also now in full, showing Himself as He is through our every relating together, regardless of what we feel, think, or see outwardly.
We will KNOW Father as He IS, showing Himself as He wishes through many walking together as one. And our knowing will be in all quiet confidence and certainty, with no shadow of any other consideration. We KNOW because God SAYS.
This day has not yet happened because you and I have not yet believed.
Yet this confidence is not something we “conjure up” by our human energeia, but it is the faith of the Son of God inside of us, released in full in our knowing in that single calendar Day appointed by God.
This is My full completion, that you love one another in exactly the same way that I love you (John 15:12).
I testify to you that this Word must be in all reality in our lives BEFORE anything outward changes its appearance – Jesus proven faithful and true.
Those who are looking for a “rapture” (pre or post-trib makes no difference) without knowing LOVE ONE ANOTHER in absolute completion in their life experience here and now are not looking for Jesus.
Solomon’s Temple follows the same basic layout as Moses’ Tabernacle.
The Tabernacle is mobile, designed to be taken apart, carried, and put back together with reasonable ease. The Temple is fixed, built of stone, standing firm and unmovable. The Tabernacle is for journey; the Temple stands in the place God has chosen.
The Tabernacle is the Pro-Thesis of God, Christ as the Source. The Temple is the Completion of God, Christ as the final resting place.
I am the A and the Z, the source and the completion, says the Lord God, the One who is existing [I am] and who has existed and who is continuously and actively coming, the One who takes hold of all, that is, the One who sustains and carries all – God All-Carrying (Revelation 1:8).
The Tabernacle is used by the writers of the New Testament primarily as the framework for our understanding of the meaning of redemption and salvation, our journey into the knowledge of God and God’s journey into the knowledge of all. The Temple is used by the writers of the New Testament primarily as the framework for our understanding of the meaning of the Body of Christ, Christ Community, God made visible inside of flesh.
Typically, the Tabernacle is our source of understanding, for it is the Pro-Thesis, God’s original set-forth Purpose. But when we look at being built together as living stones into the dwelling place of God, we are looking at the Temple.
I have taught you to say, “I am filled with all the fulness of God.” And I have taught you how to live actively in such a reality, inside of the presence and love of God, not regardless of outward distress, but including all outward distress. But that is not the First Day of Tabernacles.
The First Day of Tabernacles cannot happen to you all by yourself. The First Day of Tabernacles is 100% reciprocal – ONE ANOTHER. It is when you say together, in all certain confidence, “We together are filled with all the fullness of God.” And that confidence is not “in spite of” any contrary outward appearance, but in the full embracing of all contrary outward appearance as God together with us together reconciling the cosmos to Himself/ourselves.
The First Day of the Feast of Tabernacles is the First Day of Church, the first true Sabbath Day since Jesus rose out from the dead.
So then there is left a sabbath rest for the people of God. – We should be eager, therefore, to enter into that rest (Hebrews 4:9 & 11).
You cannot enter this rest by yourself, there is no such thing. The only entrance into this rest is through full reciprocity, many walking together as one – the people of God.
Someone put into another brother’s hands, a minister of Christ, my book, Symmorphy III: Kingdom. I wanted to know what on earth that person was reading, so I began to read it myself. I was reading some mighty things, but my chapters on the Church as Community were not so convincing. I had not yet written Symmorphy V: Life.
Of truth, the difficulty that I experienced that made me stop and then rewrite the first several chapters of Symmorphy V: Life was very much the hand of the Lord. I needed to go way deeper before I would find the flow of Spirit Word that would establish fully the New-Testament reality of the Church. Now, I know that if I rewrote those particular chapters in Kingdom, they would be much more rooted inside of God. I will not attempt any rewrites, however, until after I am teaching each of these courses in the classroom. Symmorphy was as much a journey as anything. In fact, as I am reading and marking the proof copy of Set My People Free, I see that because I wrote to learn in two completely different books, that book is focused and direct, as I had hoped it would be. It is very difficult to write of a God who is always unfolding Himself through Spirit Word; He never stops arising brand new.
Now, my purpose for that rabbit trail is to set before you Symmorphy V: Life, the book of my heart. What you read in it is Tabernacles, coming out from and governed by the ten most important verses in the Bible, a Home for Father and for us.
And it is only in applying the ten most important verses in the Bible to Church by Father in that way that we come to a much more real understanding of those verses.
Let’s set out the experience of October 15, 972 BC as a series of events.
1. The temple with its furnishings is completed.
2. Solomon directs that the treasures his father, David, had dedicated to the temple be brought into the storage rooms called “the treasuries.”
3. Meanwhile, a majority of the people of Israel were making their way to Jerusalem for the celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles.
4. On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, Solomon gathers all the leaders of Israel, with the people behind them and all around.
5. As they gather before the new temple, the priests take up the Ark of the Covenant out of the place where it was kept – we assume it was still in David’s back yard; however, the tabernacle of meeting and all of its parts are also carried up with the Ark. We thus assume that at some point the Ark and the Tabernacle had come back together, but in Jerusalem.
6. King Solomon and multitudes of people walk before the Ark slaughtering sheep and oxen beyond count. – ATONEMENT.
7. The priests carry the Ark on into its place in the Holy of Holies, leaving its carrying poles in place.
8. As the priests come back out of the Holy Place, a cloud fills the house of the Lord, so that the priests cannot continue ministering because of the cloud; for the glory of the Lord fills the house of the Lord (1 Kings 8:10-11).
9. Solomon gives a short speech regarding this House that He built.
10. Solomon stands before the altar in the outer court before all the people of Israel and dedicates the temple to God with prayer.
11. As soon as Solomon finishes his prayer, fire comes down out of the temple and consumes all the sacrifices offered thus far. The sacrifices of the Atonement are fully consumed. Then the glory of the Lord fills the temple.
12. Everyone falls on their faces on the ground worshiping God for His goodness.
13. Then Solomon and all Israel dedicate the temple with sacrifices that are peace offerings, not Atonement, which they now could count – 22,000 bulls and 120,000 sheep. [This meat is not wasted; for they will all eat it through the time of dwelling in booths.]
14. The musical Levites, set up by David, sing and play in worship.
15. Solomon consecrates the area before the temple court because the offerings being given by the people were too much to fit into the court.
16. Solomon and all Israel with Him keep the Feast of Tabernacles.
17. On the eighth day, called in Jesus’ time the Great Day of the Feast, Solomon and all Israel hold a sacred assembly, after which Solomon sends everyone home filled with joy and goodness.
I want to begin with the sacrifices, for here we see a confirmation and foreshadowing of what the Lord has taught us regarding 1 John 3:16 – By this we know love, because He set forth His soul for us and we also are committed to setting forth our souls for the sake of our brothers and sisters.
The animal sacrifices taking place BEFORE that Ark entered the temple were “without number.” This is an amplification of the Atonement wrought by Jesus to infinity. They drenched that whole area with blood and the carcasses of slaughtered animals to be consumed by fire. It is absolute; it is total; it is complete.
The animal sacrifices taking place AFTER the Ark was placed inside the temple were peace offerings, not sin offerings – AND WE ALSO. This is exactly as I have insisted, that our setting forth our souls for our brothers and sisters in NO WAY adds to the sacrifice of Jesus, but rather is a setting forth through us of that very Sacrifice. Our setting forth our souls is the peace offering, not the sin offering, the joining together of God and a human inside a peace that is already full and complete.
Then, we see that, even though the peace offerings consist of a large number, 142,000 animals, it is a counted number. This again signifies the one by one, counted application of that infinite Atonement through us.
My son took us to celebrate Father’s Day to a beer garden here in Houston. It was packed with people, family people with lots of children and a number of dogs. It was a good and festive occasion. As I sat there at our table looking out across the faces of these Houstonians, I saw only Father. I saw them walking every step in all Salvation, the very image and revelation of God.
And I understood that lostness is found in one place only – inside the hard corridors of the human mind.
Not imparting their trespasses to them. Not imparting their trespasses to them. Not imparting their trespasses to them. God was in Christ reconciling the entire cosmos to Himself, not imparting their trespasses to them.
I need to explain something very important. In order to be just, God had to create a judicial definition of “sin,” and to treat with all sin judiciously, that is, by due process of law. By that due process of law, God found all humans guilty. And by due process of law, God executed everyone. – If one died for all, then all died.
From that point on, sin is NOT defined judiciously. This is SO important. From the cross of Christ on, sin is defined only as disconnection from God on the one hand (whatever is not of faith) and hurting other people with malevolent intent on the other hand. The cross changed totally and absolutely God’s definition of “sin.”
“Sin” after the cross, is the refusal to recognize and to rejoice in the fact that God does not impute sin to anyone. Before the cross, sin is the transgression of the law. After the cross, sin is not connecting with an All-Carrying God through faith.
Before the cross, sin makes the sinner sinful. After the cross, sin is a momentary action that creates a serious problem between two people, a problem that must be resolved through full reconciliation, that is through peace offerings. After the cross, there is NO MORE sacrifice for sins. After the cross, God no longer sees any human being as a “sinner.”
Not imparting their trespasses to them.
Christianity through the centuries has not honored God or the Atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ. Nicene Christianity and Calvinism, in complete defiance of the cross of Christ, have continued to present the false story line that sin remains judicial, and that atonement must be made continuously.
Here is what the writer of Hebrews says. – For the law, having an outline but not the image of the good things coming [inside of Christ], with the same sacrifices offered each year continually, is never able to perfect or complete those who draw near. For would they not have ceased being offered? For the worshippers, having been cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But those [judicial animal] sacrifices are bringing sins into mind every year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and of goats to take away sins (Hebrews 10:1-4).
Think of that, Christianity has presented the sacrifice of Jesus AS IF it is nothing more than the blood of bulls and of goats, unable to TAKE AWAY sins, and thus in need of constant repetition, reminding the sinners, not of Christ their only life, but of sin, sin, sin. This desecration of the Sacrifice of Jesus maintains all humans in disconnection from God in their minds, even though there is NO such thing. Nicene and Calvinist theology has served only to break humans away from knowing the full reconciliation with God that is the ONLY thing in which all humans already live.
An enemy has done this. – I am more and more seeing such desecration as the horror of evil that it is. Satan lives and accuses inside of Nicene theology.
We are already made holy, belonging only to God, through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And indeed, every priest stands every day ministering, and repeatedly offering the same sacrifices which are never able to take away sins. This One, however, having offered one unbroken, bearing-of-all-sin sacrifice for sins, sat down inside of the right hand of God; from now on waiting expectantly for His enemies to be made a footstool for His feet. For by one offering, He has perfected those who are continuously being made holy by God (Hebrews 10:10-14).
Absolute – Total – Complete – Finished – Forever – All.
And waiting for His Church to show to all that our complete connection with Father, with Love and Goodness, is the only thing that is real.
The Feast of Tabernacles is when we do exactly that.
This is so very, very good, for this dramatic picture of the Ark entering its final resting place presented here to us in the dedication of Solomon’s temple on the first day of the Feast of Tabernacles, so very explicitly sets before us the meaning and relationship of 1 John 3:16 – And we also – sharing Hheart with God.
We have one job – to enable people to KNOW what is already the only thing true.
Since they are unable to know what is already the only thing true, we show them by loving them in exactly the same way that Jesus loves us – as an offering and a sacrifice to God, into a sweet-smelling aroma (Ephesians 5:1), but as a peace offering, not a sin offering.
And God has given us this so-graphic picture of the relationship between the two sides of Atonement, first absolute and second the offering of peace, on either side of the ENTRANCE of the Ark of the Covenant into its final resting place.
And that is the second dramatic thing about the events of this day.
It’s all about the Ark of the Covenant, - and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us – you and me, filled with God on the inside and revealing God on the outside, but still human, an earthen vessel, yet containing in our hearts the very Covenant that is Jesus, written as Spirit Word all through the pathways of our hearts, sharing Hheart with God. And you and me, seated there upon that Mercy Seat, just above the Blood, with the authority of God to love one another and to show full reconciliation to all.
It is this Ark entering into its final resting place, that seals forever this great reality of TABERNACLES, God among us.
What is that final resting place?
Also, you yourselves as living stones, are being constructed together as a spiritual house into a holy priesthood [devoted to God], to offer spiritual sacrifices welcomed by God through Jesus Christ (1 Peter 2:3-4). – Inside of Whom the whole building, being fitted together, is increasing into a temple, holy inside the Lord. Inside of Jesus, you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God inside the sphere of Spirit (Ephesians 2:21-22).
The FINAL resting place of the Ark of the Covenant is Church, the dwelling place of God, Christ Community.
Church is Salvation; Salvation is Church. There is no getting there without getting there.
For we are members of one another.
The third great reality we see in this mighty event that foreshadows what is coming upon us now is the infilling of the House of God with God Himself.
I pray that Christ might dwell inside your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, might be fully able to seize hold of, to comprehend together with all the holy ones, what is the breadth and length and height and depth [the full extent of God], and to know even more the surpassing, beyond-all knowledge of the love of Christ, that you might be filled unto and with all the fullness of God (Ephesians 3:17-19).
In actuality this measurement of God that we comprehend together is not a measurement of infinity, but rather, a measurement of His House, that we would KNOW the extent of the place where God dwells and the manner in which He shows Himself through us together as His BODY.
Symmorphy V: Life, the sum and heart of all I have written, gives us those measurements.
And the fourth wondrous thing that we see in this mighty demonstration of God dwelling among His people has two sides. One the one side is Solomon, the king, blessing God and blessing the people, and on the other side is all the people of Israel rejoicing with all joy inside the goodness of God among them.
We have four mighty things, then. First, the placing of the Atonement, first as absolute and second as peace through us. Second, the entrance of the Ark of the Covenant into its final resting place. Third, the indwelling of God Himself into His House, God among us. And fourth the blessing of Christ upon all and the rejoicing of all inside the goodness of God.
I think I have explored the Atonement, both as One sacrifice for sins forever and as that same thing through us as God’s peace offering – we are God’s peace offering to every human, that is, showing each one that they are already loved and carried by God.
In fact, seeing “And we also” as God’s peace offering extended to every member of creation, is something we will be doing from now on.
The Ark of the Covenant entering into its rest and God filling His completed House with all of His revelation we will explore a bit more in the next letter, God among us. Then, all the people rejoicing inside of God and speaking Christ to one another will be part of the topic of the dwelling in booths, the rejoicing in the goodness of God among us.