Everyone knows what it feels like to anticipate a special day. Kids are the best at this—ask a child when her birthday is, and she will often not only give you the day and month but the exact number of days until her birthday, no matter how far away it is: “My birthday is in ninety-seven-and-a-half days!” Whether it is a sleepover, summer camp, or a major holiday, kids do not need to be told to get excited over a big event.
Anticipation is not something we have to learn; it is innate to our design. God made us to hope and long for celebration, so He structured the biblical calendar accordingly. He did so by instituting the spring and fall holidays for Israel, and ultimately by fulfilling them in the work and person of Jesus.
Jesus and the Biblical Calendar
The biblical calendar has three main spring holidays: Passover (Pesach), Firstfruits (Bikkurim), and the Feast of Weeks (Shavuot). There are likewise three main fall festivals: the Feast of Trumpets (Yom Teruah, later called Rosh Hashanah), the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot).
Between these two seasons lies a notable time lapse—about three-and-a-half months. Many students of the Bible, including numerous Messianic Jews, believe the biblical calendar reveals the pattern for God’s working in human history. In this view, Jesus the Messiah fulfilled the spring festivals in His first coming. He will fulfill the fall festivals at His second coming.
A Summary of the Biblical Festivals
| Spring | Biblical Festival | Hebrew Name | Biblical Reference | Fulfillment in Jesus (Yeshua) |
| Passover | Pesach | Leviticus 23:5 | Jesus is the Passover Lamb (John 1:29; 1 Corinthians 5:7) who was sacrificed to take away the sins of the world. | |
| First Fruits | Bikkurim | Lev 23:9–14 | Jesus rose from the dead on this day, becoming the “first fruits” of those who have died (1 Cor 15:20). | |
| Pentecost | Shavuot | Lev 23:15–21 | The Holy Spirit was given to believers on this day, marking the start of the spiritual harvest of believers (Acts 2:1–4). | |
| Waiting | ||||
| Fall | Trumpets | Yom Teruah/Rosh Hashanah | Lev 23:23–25 | The sound of a trumpet will announce the future return of Jesus (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). |
| Day of Atonement | Yom Kippur | Lev 23:26–32 | One day in the future, Jewish people as a whole will recognize Jesus as the Messiah and turn to Him. Thus “all Israel will be saved” (Romans 11:26), and Jesus will return. | |
| Tabernacles | Sukkot | Lev 23:33–43 | This holiday symbolizes God’s dwelling among His people and points to the future when Jesus will dwell with us in His kingdom (John 1:14; Revelation 21:3). | |
If everything God set forth in the Bible for the children of Israel is instructive for us, what can be gleaned from this season of waiting?
The Challenge of Waiting on God
Waiting silently testifies to the lordship of God over time. It declares to everyone the events of our lives do not simply occur according to our will and our own actions. Rather, God is sovereign as He guides us from one season to another. The Israelites’ stopping when the cloud stopped was as much a testament to God’s leadership of them as when they actively followed the cloud (Exodus 40:36–37).
God created space, matter, and time. For this reason, faith is most fully realized in our lives when we yield all three of these elements back to Him: the “where,” “what,” and “when” of our lives. All three elements are easily seen in the life of Abraham—he journeyed to a place he had not been to before, at God’s prompting. Once he got there, he refused to be enriched by what the people of the land could offer him (Genesis 14:21–23), trusting his needs to God. In God’s perfect timing, Abraham fathered Isaac though Sarah was long past the age of childbearing (Gen 21:2).
Anticipation and Fulfillment
We see this same principle—juxtaposed—in the lives of Saul and David. Saul was tasked to wait for Samuel, the priest-judge, to come and offer lawful sacrifice on his behalf before a battle. Instead, when he saw Samuel had delayed, he took matters into his own hands and made sacrifice. As a result, he forfeited his kingdom (1 Samuel 13:13–14).
In contrast to Saul, David not only waited nearly fifteen years to be given the kingship, but even when given multiple opportunities to take the kingship for himself by striking Saul, he refused (1 Sam 24:4–7; 26:10–11). David was tempted to take Saul’s life and claim the kingship for himself but did not. As the greater David, when Jesus was tempted by Satan to claim His rule of the kingdoms of the world before the cross, he resisted (Matthew 4:8–10).
When coupled with faith, waiting can produce a sense of rest and anticipation, helping us recognize God’s work on our behalf, which we might otherwise take for granted or hurry past. As finite creatures, we can never fully comprehend what is around the bend for us in life, whether good or bad. Waiting is a mercy and is often the only way to prepare us for what lies ahead. Periods of inactivity or pause allow us to adequately reorient ourselves to a new circumstance or stage of life.
Photo by Aron Visuals on Unsplash.
Waiting and Patience
Above all, waiting produces patience: “Therefore be patient, brethren, until the coming of the Lord. The farmer waits for the precious produce of the soil, being patient about it, until it gets the early and late rains” (James 5:7). It is not incidental many of the biblical festivals are agriculturally oriented, as are many parables on the kingdom of God:
And He was saying, “The kingdom of God is like a man who casts seed upon the soil; and he goes to bed at night and gets up by day, and the seed sprouts and grows—how, he himself does not know. The soil produces crops by itself; first the blade, then the head, then the mature grain in the head. But when the crop permits, he immediately puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”
And He said, “How shall we picture the kingdom of God, or by what parable shall we present it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the soil, though it is smaller than all the seeds that are upon the soil, yet when it is sown, it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and forms large branches; so that the birds of the air can nest under its shade. (Mark 4:26–32)
The work of the Great Commission is likewise described in agricultural terms and metaphors (Matt 9:37–38, 13:39; John 4:35).
The Harvest Is Ripe
Since ancient Israel was an agrarian society, it should come as no surprise four of the festivals each have ties to the agricultural life of Israel. Passover and First Fruits mark the beginning of the barley harvest. The Feast of Weeks (Shavuot) relates to the wheat harvest. Finally, the Feast of Tabernacles (Sukkot) marks the end of the harvest season.
Thematically, the biblical calendar year ends in harvest and plenty, with God dwelling among His people once more as the great Master of the feast (Rev 21:3) The end of the story is not the darkness, death, and decay of winter. Rather, the biblical calendar culminates with Sukkot, a joyous time of feasting looking forward to God dwelling on earth with people at the restoration of everything.
Photo by Tamanna Rumee on Unsplash.
But before this glorious day, there is one kind of crop we can gather only in the interim between the spring and fall: fruit.
The why behind the waiting, the delay between Messiah’s first and second coming, and the fulfillment of redemptive history is the same for the church as it is for individual believers. In this time of waiting, God desires His people to bear fruit through abiding in Him (John 15:4), like seed sown on good soil (Mark 4:20) bearing “fruit in keeping with repentance” (Matt 3:8), “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22).
Conclusion
Without the time between the spring and fall feasts, there would be no harvest. Likewise, without the apparent delay in Messiah’s second coming, there could be no harvest of souls in the world, redemption, or ultimate restoration of the kingdom to Israel (Acts 1:6). What is sown can be utterly unlike what comes to fruition (1 Cor 15:37), and what is done in one time and season is not a reflection of the fruit of the next. “He who goes to and fro weeping, carrying his bag of seed, shall indeed come again with a shout of joy, bringing his sheaves with him”(Psalm 126:6)
In times of personal hardship and the Lord’s apparent silence and delay, waiting necessitates childlike faith to trust the One who laid the foundations for our redemption will bring it to completion not only in our own lives, but for all of creation.
“Behold, I am making all things new” (Rev 21:5).
Published on October 4, 2024.
Header photo by Stephen Radford on Unsplash.
