Click here for the Zechariah 14:20-21
20 On that day holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar. 21 Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty. ~ Zechariah 14:20-21
Today, we come to our final passage in our study of the book of Zechariah. And, as we have already considered, in the Millennium, after the Battle of Armageddon is completed, there will be people from the nations who will believe in the Lord Jesus and survive the wrath of God. Everyone who will go into the Millennium will be "Born Again." Under the old covenant, there were three feasts the Jews were commanded to keep: Passover, Pentecost, and Tabernacles.
Passover referred to the deliverance from Egypt, and the blood of the sacrificed lamb applied to the doorposts. The Passover feast was fulfilled when the Lord Jesus was crucified. He celebrated Passover with his disciples in the evening because the day, the Jewish day, begins at night. The very next day, He was crucified on Passover as the Passover lamb, who takes away the sins of the world. That Passover feast has been fulfilled.
The second feast was Pentecost, 50 days after Passover, where the first fruits of the harvest were taken before the Lord. The people went through their fields, they took the corner of the wheat, bundle them up in sheaves, and they waved them before the Lord. It was a way to acknowledge that the first of the harvest belonged to the Lord. Pentecost was fulfilled in Acts 2, when the disciples were all gathered together in the upper room. The Holy Spirit came and 3,000 people were saved.
The third feast, the feast of Tabernacles, has been unfulfilled to date. As we have pointed out before, the Feast of Tabernacles celebrated the fact that God kept Israel through the wilderness for 40 years. It was that time when the Lord's presence protected Israel in the wilderness and brought them into the promised land.
The fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles will happen at the Second Coming of the Lord Jesus. After being in the long wilderness of the sinful world, the believers in the Lord Jesus will be delivered into the kingdom age at His coming. When He has defeated His enemies and He will reign over all the earth.
In v.20 of today's text we read, "On that day holy to the Lord will be inscribed on the bells of the horses, and the cooking pots in the Lord’s house will be like the sacred bowls in front of the altar."
The imagery here is drawn from worship under the old covenant. The New Testament interprets old covenant details in terms of new covenant spiritual realities. For example, the Lord Jesus revealed that true fellowship and worship are not restricted to a holy place in Jerusalem in John 4:21-24. And, Paul showed that God extends his hand to all nations. Under the new covenant, the temple of God is the church, not a building in Jerusalem. We offer ourselves as living sacrifices, not physical ones at an altar in Jerusalem. And, circumcision is that of the heart, not just the cutting of the foreskin.
The phrase "Holy to The Lord" is a very special phrase in the Bible. That phrase was engraved in only one place in Israel’s history. The high priest, Aaron, had a turban. On the front of his turban was a gold plate, and engraved on that gold plate were the words "Holy to The Lord" which meant set apart. Aaron was an uncommon man, but he was especially holy, because he was a type of the Lord Jesus.
These words were reserved only for the high priest. The bells of the horses and the pots in the Temple in the kingdom age will have that same inscription. The Millennial kingdom will be holy. There will be no secular and sacred in that world. There will only be the sacred.
In v.21 of today's text we read, "Every pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord Almighty, and all who come to sacrifice will take some of the pots and cook in them. And on that day there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty."
Everything in the Millennium pertaining to the worship of God will be holy. And, there will no longer be a Canaanite in the house of the Lord Almighty. The word Canaanite is a figure of speech referring to an unclean person or a person who hasn't been made holy to the Lord. At the beginning of the millennial kingdom of Christ, there will not be a degenerate person.
Our conclusion is that we should not interpret Zechariah 14 in a literal way nor as a command to Christians to keep the Festival of Tabernacles. Like Passover and Pentecost, the feast of Tabernacles will be fulfilled in the second coming of the Lord Jesus. It will be in the Millennium, the feast of Tabernacles will be fulfilled like the other feast in the old covenant. When we come to this chapter, having trusted in the Lord Jesus, we recognize them in light of Christ’s redemptive work.
Under the new covenant, we are not commanded to keep the Festival of Tabernacles. Christ has fulfilled the old covenant law. The spiritual reality is that Christ has made his tabernacle with us which is what the Apostle told us in John 1:14. It will be that when we are in the Millennium, we, the people of God, will have become the tabernacle of God in whom the Holy Spirit dwells.
