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October 28, 2012 |
| Restoration in 7 Feasts | ||
In the last lesson we saw the Apostle Paul, in Romans 11, correcting the Church of Rome on its understanding of the place that Israel has and still plays in God's plan. The Church of Rome chose to ignore that message and became Anti-Semitic. Instead of seeing its community as branches grafted onto Israel it chose to see itself as a new tree founded on the Apostle Peter.
One result of this view was that they threw away or changed all of the holy days God had given to Israel. Those they threw away were replaced by new ones like Easter Sunday, Ascension, Assumption of Mary, All Saints Day (Day after Halloween), and Christmas. The ones they kept of God's holy days they renamed and sometimes moved.
One of those was Passover, which they renamed to Good Friday and moved. Late in the first century, Polycarp, one of the few people alive at the time who had known and worked with the Apostles, travelled to Rome to scold the Bishop of Rome on their change of the date for Passover. Polycarp told him that the Apostles had always observed Passover on the same date as the Jews and had taught their churches to do the same. The Bishop of Rome rejected Polycarp's statements. This further increased the split between the Church of Rome and the Church of Antioch in Asia Minor (now called Turkey).
Almost all Christian churches in existence now are daughters of the Church of Rome. Therefore the result of these changes to the holy days is that most Christians today don't know God's holy days and don't know the message that he showed through them. The message is a description of God's plan for salvation and restoration of mankind.
God's calendar is divided into two halves, the spring feasts and the fall feasts. The spring feasts were all symbolic of the major events of the First Coming. Likewise the fall feasts are all symbolic of the Second Coming. There are 7 of these feasts as you might expect, 4 in the spring and 3 in the fall
Most Christians know of Passover and even understand that it was a shadow or foreshadowing of the Messiah's death on the Cross.
"Each Israelite family was to kill an unblemished lamb or goat, collect its blood in a basin, and then apply the blood to the lintel and doorposts of their houses."1 The blood was to be applied using a leafy branch from a Hyssop tree. This would have resulted in blood at arm level on each side and just above the head. Many people believe this prefigured the blood of Jesus on the cross.
"That same evening they were required to eat their lamb, […] without breaking any of its bones, along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. The following morning, Passover morning, the morning of the fourteenth, the single Passover lamb was slain by the priests on the Altar of Sacrifice."
All of the elements of Passover are symbolic of Jesus death on the cross. The blood speaks to the blood of Jesus and its protection from the angel of death. The unblemished lamb speaks to the sinlessness of Jesus. Eating the lamb speaks to eating the body, which we do symbolically in communion. The unleavened bread also speaks to eating the body and being without leaven speaks again of sinlessness. The unbroken bones speak to Jesus bones not being broken on the cross like they were for the two criminals who were with him. The Passover lamb slain by the priests speaks to the priest's murder of Jesus. The sacrifice of the Passover lamb as an atonement for sin speaks to the sacrifice of Jesus as the atonement for our sins. More generally the act of sprinkling blood on the doorposts and lintel was an act of faith. The Israelites believed in God and trusted him enough to obey him and so they were saved from harm.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread began at Passover with the Israelites removing all yeast (leaven) and products made from yeast from their homes. For 7 days they would have nothing to do with yeast. Yeast is symbolic of sin and therefore this feast is symbolic of removing sin from our lives. This is why in many of his parables Jesus used yeast to talk about sin. The Jews listening to him would have understood what he meant.
This feast, then, speaks to Jesus' death on the cross as taking away sin and of our continuing need to keep ourselves from sin.
Paul speaks to Christians about this in 1 Corinthians 5.
6 Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little yeast ferments the whole lump? 7 Purge out the old yeast from you that you would be a new lump, just as you are unleavened bread. Our Passover is The Messiah, who was slain for our sake. 8 Therefore let us make a feast, not with the old leaven, neither with the yeast which is in wickedness or of bitterness, but with the leaven of purity and of holiness.
The Feast of First Fruits celebrates the beginning of the spring harvest. It is a dedication of the harvest to God. A sample of the best of the harvest was brought to the priests. It served as a demonstration that a good harvest was the result of good roots or good seed and proof that the rest of the harvest was also good.
In the same way Jesus' resurrection makes him the first fruit of the harvest of God. He serves as a demonstration that the spiritual seeds and roots are good and that, therefore, the whole crop is good and dedicated to God.
"According to [Leviticus 23:11, First Fruits] is to be celebrated on the first day of the week that follows the Sabbath that follows Passover Day". This marks the day that Jesus' disciples found the tomb was empty.
50 days after First Fruits comes Pentecost. The Jews were never really clear on the purpose of Pentecost because God had not explained it to them. In Hebrew it means the Feast of Weeks, which explains nothing.
For the other feasts they understood the purpose of the feasts though not that they foreshadowed what the Messiah would do. We know it as the day the Holy Spirit was given to believers.
"Part of the [Pentecost] ceremony consisted of the simultaneous offering of two leavened (sinful) loaves before the Lord (Leviticus 23:17). The fulfillment of Pentecost is the formation of the church on the Day of Pentecost, at which time the Spirit was given to baptize believers of two sinful "loaves" into one body: For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body, whether Jews or Gentiles (1 Corinthians 12:13) that He might make the two into one new man (Ephesians 2:15)."
As we have seen, each of the feasts foreshadowed an event during the First Coming and was fulfilled by that event happening or beginning on that exact day.
"In Leviticus 23, God had just completed addressing the spring festivals; and before addressing the fall festivals, He had this to say, seemingly out of the blue:"
When you reap the harvest of your land, moreover, you shall not reap to the very corners of your field nor gather the gleaning of your harvest; you are to leave them for the needy and the alien. I am the LORD your God. (Leviticus 23:22)
"Why should God be addressing the providing of food for the needy and the alien at this point? The answer is this: The feasts all have sequential prophetic outworkings, and this admonition also has a prophetic outworking, and perfectly in sequence with the feasts."
"Pentecost has come, and we are now in the [time of the fullness of the Gentiles2], the summer, and it's the time for laboring in the fields. Jesus said, Do you not say, 'There are yet four months, and then comes the harvest'? Behold, I say to you, lift up your eyes and look on the fields, that they are white for harvest (John 4:35). It's the time in which we all need to be laboring to provide spiritual food for the spiritually needy and the alien to bring in a harvest of souls for the Lord, each of us doing his or her part according to our gifts and callings."
The Feast of Trumpets was celebrated by the blowing of ram's horn trumpets. It marks the beginning of the year on one of their calendars and the beginning of the 7th month on the other calendar. At the start of each month the priests blow the trumpet to tell the people to turn away from their sins but on this day everyone blows the trumpet. Therefore this is the 7th trumpet blowing on the calendar.
From understanding the feast period that follows we will also understand that this 7th trumpet blowing symbolizes the last trumpet the end of an age.
In the Book of Revelation and in many of the epistles there are references to all 7 trumpets, or just the 7th trumpet, or the final trumpet. This feast is the symbolic representation of that 7th trumpet. Especially from 1st and 2nd Thessalonians we know that the final trumpet is the call to God's people to arise and to ascend to be with him in the event now called the Rapture. Here are the verses from 1 Thessalonians 4
16 Because Our Lord shall descend from Heaven with a command and with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet blast of God, and the dead who are in The Messiah shall rise first; 17 and then we who remain, who have life, we shall be carried away with them together in clouds to a meeting of Our Lord in the air, and in this way, we shall always be with Our Lord.
1 Corinthians 15 says it this way
52 Suddenly, like the blink of an eye, at the last trumpet, when it shall sound, and the dead shall rise without corruption, and we shall be transformed.
In Christianity this feast is sometimes called Return of the King, for obvious reasons.
The Feast of Trumpets begins a 10 day period that ends with the Day of Atonement also called the Last Great Day. At the end of this day in Israel the final sacrifices were made and sin was symbolically removed completely. All those who had not repented of their sins by that time were "cut-off."
This feast involves a complicated set of sacrifices that show that although Jesus' sacrifice has taken sin away from us the record of sin still exists. This feast symbolizes the removal of sin the day that Jesus' atoning sacrifice wipes the record clean.
This may be hard for some to understand. In a previous lesson we learned that we are justified before God because Jesus' paid the debt we owed. This is in the same way as a legal court where a man is freed or redeemed because his debt has been paid. But the court record still exists. This feast points to a day when even the court records will be destroyed.
The Feast of Tabernacles begins 5 days after the Day of Atonement. It marks the period of time when God was with his people, the Israelites, while they wandered in the desert. It symbolizes the coming time when God will again be with his people.
The direct relationship between man and God was ruptured in the Garden of Eden and sin entered into the world. These are the 7 steps that God has taken and will take to restore that relationship and remove sin.
1. Passover Jesus, the Promised Messiah and Son of God, would become the sacrifice that takes away sin
2. Unleavened Bread Jesus kept himself sinless and we are to do the same
3. First Fruits Jesus is the first fruit of the new covenant
4. Pentecost Jesus gives the Holy Spirit to those who believe
5. Trumpets Jesus returns to reap the harvest of the new covenant
6. Atonement Jesus atoning sacrifice removes sin from the world
7. Tabernacles Jesus comes to stay with his people
When God gave these feasts to the Israelites they never understood there was a prophetic message in them. Jesus understood the message of course. But it wasn't until the Holy Spirit was given that any man understood that there was a message and what the message was.
1 This an similar references in this lesson taken from http://www.biblestudyproject.org/feasts-of-israel-messianic.htm
2 Spoken of by Paul in the previous lesson on Romans 11