....................................................................................................................................................
The
Biblical Feasts Of Israel All Point To Jesus
In ingenious ways, God
created fun, experiential reminders of important milestones along the journey
of Redemption… but as well as marking the history between God and His people,
these milestones also go way into the future too. Today, as people are
beginning to think more about the second coming of Jesus, it’s worth
remembering that the feasts not only speak of Yeshua’s first coming, but also
His triumphant return. It’s a great time to look again in earnest at the
information God has given us in the calendar He set for His people.
By ONE FOR ISRAEL Staff
God commanded his people: Have a feast! Take a
break!
He made these feasts part of the Law,
codifying the commandments to stop for a while and celebrate a few times a
year.
Of course, there’s more to it than just food
and merriment (although there’s plenty of that for most of them) but there’s
deep prophetic meaning woven into the tapestry of God’s mandated feasts.
In ingenious ways, God created fun,
experiential reminders of important milestones along the journey of Redemption…
but as well as marking the history between God and His people, these milestones
also go way into the future too.
Today, as people are beginning to think more
about the second coming of Jesus, it’s worth remembering that the feasts not
only speak of Yeshua’s first coming, but also His triumphant return.
It’s a great time to look again in earnest at
the information God has given us in the calendar He set for His people.
Dates with destiny
The first thing to talk about is the word for
feast used in Hebrew.
The word for “feast” is moed (מועד). This word is based on a very important root word, עד.
In general, we say that moed
means “appointed time”, or set feast.
But there is more to it. There is certainly a
sense of destiny associated with the word, but the word is also used to talk
about time: everlasting, like “Everlasting Father” (Isaiah 9:6).
It also means “until”.
Here’s the other main meaning of עד: it is the Hebrew word for “witness”.
In court a witness gives testimony to what
they have seen and heard, telling something to the people listening about
something they have not experienced.
The witness testifies and points to something
that isn’t present, but has to be explained.
So, all together, the word for feast, moed,
means a fixed appointed time of destiny which testifies and points to something
that goes backwards and forwards through eternity.
Isn’t that a perfect description of what God
gives us in the biblical feasts?!
Woah! Slow down there
Other Hebrew words for the feasts are mikra (מקרא) and atsera (עצרה).
Mikra is often translated as “holy convocation”,
and it means to call people together.
It is also one of the words we use in Hebrew
for “Bible”, because it has to do with the word for reading as well as calling.
The second word, often translated as “solemn
assembly”, is the word to stop.
Today in Israel you’ll see it on buses,
showing where the next stop is. It has to do with stopping activity, or being
restrained.
Leviticus 23 gives us a clear rundown of all of these feasts that God
established and commanded the Israelites to keep.
They all are extremely rich with prophetic
meaning.
The first moed listed
is the Shabbat.
In Ezekiel 20:12 God says that the Shabbat is
a sign between Him and His people, a holy day which serves as a reminder that
He has set us aside to be a holy people.
The pause each week reminds us that it’s God
who created the world and the seven-day week, and Jesus says that the Shabbat
was created for our benefit.
The rest from work helps us relate in a more
healthy way to God, our families, our environment and ourselves.
The Hebrews chapter 4 also explains that
it is a witness to the rest that Jesus would bring through His work at Calvary.
Now He has finished His work, and is seated at
the right hand of the Father (Hebrews
10:12).
Thanks to Yeshua, we can enter perfect rest
with God with Him.
The Shabbat testifies to what Jesus did when
He paid for our sin, and also what we have to look forward to when He returns
in glory.
Another interesting thing about the Shabbat is
that God made seven days in the week. He could have chosen any number, but He
chose seven.
Many of the times and seasons mentioned in
Genesis chapter one are obvious to both humans and animals alike – nature knows
the difference between night and day, spring, summer, fall and winter… and even
months going by as the moon changes shape.
But the days of the week? Only human beings
know which day of the week it is – no animal knows whether it’s Shabbat or not!
The seven-day week and the weekend was created
by God for us.
The whole world keeps to this pattern, this
seven days of completion, and this is also significant, as we shall see.
The Spring Feasts
Then the next set of feasts come in the
Spring, and are all related to one another:
In Exodus 12, God instructs the Israelites to
start the calendar in the first month, which is now known as Nisan in the
Spring.
“This month will mark
the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year for
you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month,
each man is to take a lamb for his family, one lamb for the household… Your lamb
is to be without blemish, a year old male. You may take it from the sheep or
from the goats. You must watch over it until the fourteenth day of the same
month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel is to slaughter it
at twilight.”
“The blood will be a
sign for you on the houses where you are. When I see the blood, I will pass
over you.”
When we think of the events of the Passover and the Exodus from Egypt, it’s hard to think of a more
perfect picture for what was to come in Jesus!
An innocent lamb without flaws was sacrificed,
and the blood smeared on wood vertically and horizontally so that people who
believed would be saved from death.
Hammering the point home, Jesus was tested and
found innocent, then He was beaten and betrayed, before his sacrifice for us on
the wooden cross at exactly the time Passover lambs were being checked and slaughtered.
The picture is crystal clear.
“Get rid of the old
hametz [leaven], so you may be a new batch, just as you are unleavened — for Messiah,
our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed.” - (1 Corinthians 5:7)
Then the people, after being redeemed by
blood, passed through water and went on a long, hard journey before they
finally arrived in the Promised Land.
Similarly, after receiving salvation through
the blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God who took away the sin of the world, we go
through the waters of baptism and walk with God through hardships until we
finally arrive in the place prepared for us.
After the night of Passover itself, we enter
the Feast of Unleavened Bread which lasts for seven days.
This is a picture of our lives as believers
here on earth, choosing to turn our back on sin, with leaven (hametz) being
symbolic of sin.
The unleavened bread also points to Jesus –
matzoh bread is striped and pierced, just as He was, and with no trace of
leaven which represents sin and pride.
The 14th of Nisan, the night of the Passover,
falls on different days of the week each year, but we are told that the Feast of Firstfruits must always be celebrated on the first
SUNDAY after Passover (Leviticus 23:15).
This feast is unique in that it fixes the day
of the week – of course it points to resurrection Sunday, as a prophetic
witness to the day when Jesus gained victory over death.
It is also unusual because although there are
other sacrifices mentioned, there is no sin offering required for the festival
of Firstfruits.
Jesus was the first to rise again from the
dead, never to die again, but He will not be the last!
At the end of time, we will all join Him and
have glorious, new resurrection bodies. We will all be changed, in the
twinkling of an eye (1 Corinthians 15:52).
Then from that Sunday, God commands that His
people should count seven weeks to the Feast of Weeks, Shavuot in
Hebrew, which means weeks (Leviticus 23:16).
This festival is also known as Pentecost,
with pente meaning 50, because it’s 50 days since the
Feast of Firstfruits.
Pentecost is the time when God poured out His Holy Spirit on the
believers, giving them His power to live a new life in the Messiah and take the
gospel all over the world.
Shavuot testifies to the gathering and
inclusion of the Gentiles into the New Covenant.
These Spring feasts all connected and
dependent on each other, and the basis and foundation is the blood of the lamb.
All the other Spring Feasts depend on when the
night of Passover falls.
Unleavened bread follows the Passover seder,
and Firstfruits falls on whichever Sunday comes next… and Shavuot is counted seven weeks from then.
But it all hinges on that night of blood on
the doorframes.
Eating the unleavened bread of a repentant
lifestyle is no use without the salvation of blood.
The Passover and the redemption of blood must
come first, and is followed by the equipping of the Spirit to help us walk out
our new lives in Him.
So, all these Spring Feasts have been
fulfilled in many ways in the first coming of Jesus.
The Fall Feasts
Then there is a long gap before the next
festivals in the fall.
This gap between the Spring feasts and the
fall feasts is not dependent on wherever Shavuot ended up, but rather starts on
the first day of seventh month, which means the gap between them varies and is
of uncertain length, year to year.
This testifies of our experience of waiting,
living in expectation of the trumpet call which will announce the return of
King Jesus.
The Feast of Trumpets is called Yom Teruah in Hebrew, which
means a loud noise, rather than trumpets exactly.
Silver trumpets were called for, and we learn
in Thessalonians that there will be a great trumpet sound to usher in the
return of the Messiah.
Silver represents redemption in the Bible, and
although Jesus opened the door of redemption 2000 years ago, God has yet to
ultimately redeem all things to Himself as He promised He would do in the Age
to Come.
Ten days later, on the tenth day of the
seventh month, we have Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement.
The number ten signifies God’s claim for
perfect obedience (think of the 10 commandments).
In this special day of national repentance and
sacrifice, the claims of God are met and the conscience of the people is
cleared.
It’s a time of affliction and humbling,
repentance and cleansing.
In ancient Israel on Yom Kippur, the high
priest entered in alone, but Jesus, our high priest, has made a way for us to
be together with Him in the holy of holies.
However, those who reject the forgiveness of
Jesus will have to stand before the judgement seat with no cover of atonement.
Yom Kippur points towards the Day of
Judgement, the great and terrible day of the Lord.
Last of all we have the Feast of Tabernacles, or Sukkot as we call it in Hebrew.
After hearing Ezra the priest read the
instructions about how to celebrate Sukkot after they had returned from
Babylon, the people of Israel joyfully went to fulfil the command to go and
build booths!
God instructed His people to build shelters,
or sukkot as they’re called in Hebrew, to remind us of the forty years of
journeying in the desert.
A week spent in a flimsy shelters reminds us
of the temporary nature of this life, and points to our eternal home in the
world to come.
The wheat harvest and the grape harvest are
both gathered before Sukkot.
Jesus speaks of good crops of wheat being like
fruitful believers, and also the Bible warns us of grapes trodden down in God’s
wrath.
The harvesting and the sorting happen before
Sukkot which is like a big harvest festival.
Unlike the Feast of Unleavened Bread which is
seven days long, this holiday lasts for eight days, which symbolises going
beyond completion into eternity, resurrection and a new beginning.
There are seven days of the feast, with an
eighth day (known as shmini atzeret) of joyful
rest at the end!
“So on the fifteenth
day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruits of the land, you
are to keep the Feast of Adonai for seven days. The first day is to
be a Shabbat rest, and the eighth day will also be a Shabbat rest.”
In Zechariah 2:10, God promises His people that
He’s going to come and tabernacle with us, and Jesus makes it clear to us that
He wants to live with us, and we with Him.
In Jewish thought, a sukkah is reminiscent of
a chuppa, a wedding canopy.
This is another shelter that points to the
ultimate wedding of the Bride and the Lamb. The ultimate rest.
This is how the calendar ends, with joyful
union with God.
The feasts as witnesses
and pointers
Now you might ask, with all these amazing
signs that point so clearly to Jesus, why don’t Jewish people believe in Him?
A large part of the answer is that the Jewish
picture of the Messiah is very different to the Lamb of God, the Suffering
Servant who came 2000 years ago.
They were expecting a conquering king, a
victorious warrior, who would usher in a Messianic age of perfection.
Why did they think that? Because that is what
is described over and over again in the Hebrew Scriptures – and it will happen!
But many Christians don’t seem to know this
side of our Messiah very well.
They might know what Revelation says about the
end of time, but aren’t so familiar with the hundreds of details about the
Messiah’s glorious coming given to us in the Old Testament.
In the same way that the Jewish people missed
the time of His visitation in the first century because they were expecting
something very different, people will be in for a big shock when He comes again
in glory if they’re expecting a gentle shepherd instead of a conquering King.
Where Christians see the crucifixion
prophesied in the Passover, Jewish people see multiple pointers to the ultimate
redemption to come.
Many seem to believe that the Spring feasts
point exclusively to Yeshua’s first coming and only the Fall feasts look to his
return, but there is plenty we can learn about His second coming from all of
the feasts.
As each day passes we are getting nearer and
nearer to the day of His return.
Do you know what to expect? Do you know what
the Hebrew Scriptures tell us about what will happen when the Messiah comes in
glory?
What we can learn from all of the Feasts of
the Lord about that great and glorious day?
It’s high time to learn more about the Lion of Judah the Jewish people have been expecting generation after generation, because let me tell you, He is on His way.
We're an
initiative of Jewish and Arab born-again believers, building the Kingdom in
Israel through online evangelism and our own Bible college.
No comments:
Post a Comment