God’s Calendar - The Month (New Moon) of Tevet 2021 - (5782)

Welcome to this special live broadcast covering the Feast of Tabernacles in 2021, year 5782 on God's civil calendar. Whether you are joining live or watching from the replay, we wish you a very happy Feast of Tabernacles — Sukkot, as some call it. We have a great deal of information drawn from the scriptures on how important this festival is, this commanded feast of rejoicing. Tonight we culminate the Lord's feast days with the seven-day Feast of Tabernacles and then the eighth day, which we will also address.

This is a great season of rejoicing and gratitude for everything the Lord has done for each one of us. As we do throughout this ministry, we will look at these things personally, historically, and prophetically — examining the Messiah's second coming events alongside the immediate application of these feast days. We do this consistently when studying the feast days, the new moons, the tribes, the Hebrew letters, and more. Tonight our focus is the Feast of Tabernacles. If you are not familiar with it, the foundational passage is Leviticus 23. It is a seven-day rejoicing feast that began at sundown and runs through the twenty-eighth of September, bookended by that significant eighth day.

The Feast of Tabernacles carries several names in Scripture. It is called the Feast of Nations, because as we see in the prophet Zechariah, all the nations will come to Jerusalem to worship the King. In connection with that, the high priest would sacrifice seventy bulls representing the seventy nations. It is also called the Feast of Ingathering, marking the end of the grape harvest and the close of the harvest season. Additionally, it is called the Feast of Booths, the Feast of Tents, and Sukkot. Each of these names surfaces in the scriptures and reveals something beautiful about this appointed time.

There is something significant about the six months stretching from Passover in the spring to Tabernacles in the fall — the arc from the first feast to the seventh. These six months trace a journey of prophetic foreshadowing, purging, cleansing, and refining. The Lord uses this season to mature us spiritually, to bring us to ascend — to make aliyah — to the highest point possible in our personal lives, our families, and our callings. It begins at Passover and culminates at the Feast of Tabernacles, with that glorious eighth day as a capstone.

Before arriving at the feast days of the seventh month, there is the month of Elul on the Hebrew calendar — the month of repentance. Moses went up the mountain a final forty days beginning on Elul the first and came down on the Day of Atonement, Tishri the tenth. The Messiah himself was tempted forty days and forty nights, ending at Yom Kippur. Jonah proclaimed forty days of repentance to Nineveh, also concluding at Tishri the tenth. So the spirit of repentance in Elul bleeds directly into the first ten days of Tishri on the civil calendar. Then comes the final verdict on the Day of Atonement, followed by a five-day window of grace, and then the Feast of Tabernacles — the feast of rejoicing.

The three fall feasts therefore tell a single story: repentance, redemption, and rejoicing. We repent in order to be redeemed, and after redemption comes rejoicing. That is where we are tonight. For eight days He commands us to rejoice, and we will see that plainly in Leviticus 23. It is a time to put on a smile and genuinely thank Almighty God for everything He has done, recognizing that all blessings flow from Him.

Everything, however, begins with God's calendar. It is one of the three foundations we must have when we speak about the timing of the Messiah's first and second coming events, the prophecies of the end of the age, the festivals, and the Sabbaths. It all flows back to God's calendar, the feast days, and the everlasting covenants — especially when discussing biblical prophecy.

God's calendar is first stated in Genesis 1:14–16. He says: "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night, and let them be for signs and seasons, and for days and years. And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light on the earth." And it was so. "God made two great lights — the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night. He made the stars also."

Right there in the very beginning, He sets the prerequisites for His calendar: the sun and the moon. The sun governs the days; the moon sets the months. We live by the Gregorian calendar, which is an excellent scientific calendar, but it is based on the sun alone. God's calendar requires both. Today, for instance, is Tishri 15 on the Hebrew calendar — God's calendar — which corresponds to September 21 on the Gregorian calendar. But we must correlate them, because they do not always align. Next year, Tishri 15 will fall on a different Gregorian date.

It is equally important to note what He means when He says the lights are for "days and years." This is not speaking of ordinary days and calendar years in the way we typically think of them. He is speaking of the Shabbat days, the festival days, and the Shemitah years. And when He says the lights are for "signs and seasons," the Hebrew word translated "seasons" is moed, which means a divine appointment — a set time, a fixed time, a scheduled event that the Father has preordained for His Son to intersect with human history. His calendar is literally a billboard in the sky, marking His divine appointments.

Understanding His calendar — even a basic understanding — is essential for being on His timetable rather than mankind's timetable. We must understand the time of our visitation. The majority of the Jewish people in the first century did not understand the time of their visitation, as Luke 19 records, and the result was the destruction of Jerusalem in A.D. 70. His calendar, His signs, His seasons — these are divine appointments, fixed times, scheduled events — for the first coming events and equally for the second coming events.

Now, turning to Leviticus 23, most people refer to these as the Jewish feasts or Israel's feasts. There is a widespread misunderstanding about this in the Gentile church. God did give these feast days to the Jewish people to be a light to the nations, as Isaiah 42 and 49 make clear. But once you accept the Messiah, you cross over into the commonwealth of Israel. Paul addresses this in Ephesians 2:11–13: you are no longer strangers, because the blood of the Lamb has grafted you in. Romans 11 describes this grafting in detail, and Galatians 3 confirms it as well. These are the Lord's feast days — not Jewish-only observances. He gave them to Israel to steward and to share as a light to the nations.

Exodus 12:49 states that there is one Torah for the citizen and for the stranger. Paul affirms in Ephesians 2:11–13 that if you have accepted the blood of the Lamb, you are no longer a stranger — you are part of the commonwealth of Israel. We worship as He has prescribed in Torah, as it pertains to us. This does not mean Gentile believers must go and sacrifice animals. There is profound misunderstanding in the Gentile church about what keeping Torah requires and what it does not. Torah observance in its fullness has three prerequisites that most people cannot meet today: it requires being in the land of Israel, it requires a functioning high priest, and it requires a standing Temple.