Transcription of 14ID1712
Leviticus 23
“The Feasts Of The Lord”
October 29, 2014
Leviticus 23 – our favorite book of the Bible. We have two more weeks after
tonight, and then, on the third week from now, we’re going to have Don Stewart
here, and we’re going to do a night of question and answer. I hope you’re thinking
of some good questions. We’ll just take them without you writing them out or
sending them in. We’ll just take them as they come and see what the Lord will do –
so that we’ll spend a night with that. And then it is our intention to go to the book
of Numbers, only because I know where that is. It’s right after Leviticus, and our
intention right now (after I did the outline last week) – I think we’re going to be
twenty-one weeks in Numbers, our favorite book of the Bible after Leviticus.
Tonight we’d like to look at one chapter, but it’s a good one; and it’s a great one for
our communion night and one that learning and knowing, I think, will help you
literally with hundreds of other verses in the Bible. So if you’re not familiar with
the feasts of the Jews and the spiritual reasons behind them and what they stand
for, I think you’re going to love these verses, and they’re going to be a part of your
spiritual walk in the days to come.
We’ve been in Leviticus for quite some time as the Lord brought a young nation out
under the leadership of Moses. They are six weeks out of Egypt to Mt. Sinai.
They were in Egypt 430 years, under oppression after Joseph died, and they were
there for nine months while the Lord made Himself known to Pharaoh, and Pharaoh
refused to respond to the plagues. We’ve gone through the sacrifices that allowed
worship. We’ve looked at the laws that govern the walk, if you will, of a child of
God. All of them are there so that we might declare that He is our Lord. We live
different lives than those idol worshippers in Egypt or in the ways of the
Egyptians. That’s all, by the way, that this 2½ million people that sat here knew.
We’ve looked at the role of the priests and the types of all that they did and of
God’s desire for fellowship with us and the sacrificial substitutionary death that
would allow us to be saved.
But tonight we come to the feast days and the holy days and the Sabbath days
which were, interestingly enough, part of the national life of Israel. Aside from
the Day of Atonement, which was very solemn, all of the other feast days and
weeks were designed by the Lord to get His people together as a nation to
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celebrate His goodness. They were really calendar events to collectively come and
talk about God’s provision and God’s goodness and God’s involvement in the fabric
of their national life. Each of these feasts, as you can look at the paper that you
were given, has a New Testament equivalent. It is Jesus who fulfilled these feasts
either in the work in our lives as His people or in the promised work that He would
yet come to do in and through the nation of Israel. So Jesus is our Sabbath rest,
right? We’ve rested from our own labors. He is our Passover Lamb. His blood
caused the judgment of God to pass over us. Our hope is in Him. The Bible says
He is the firstfruits from the dead (1 Corinthians 15). Because He lives, we shall
live also. So, take some notes. Commit them to learning. They will serve you well
as you study His Word.
But imagine for a minute if today we were a nation, and Jesus was at the center of
our national conscience – that we, as a people, would have holidays each year simply
to honor the Lord, that there really wouldn’t be a president or some victory
somewhere but that we would just stop weeks at a time and say, “We’re not going
to go to work. We’re not really going to run around much. We’re going to gather
together often and celebrate and rejoice in our place before God.” That would be
an amazing thing, wouldn’t it? And that is really what God desired. He desired it
for the nation. We have it now in the church, I hope. And then, one day the nation
of Israel will see Him again come and speak and use them mightily. But that’s how
God wants it, and that’s how He wanted it here. Remember this was a group of
people that had not known God and that had not known the plans of God, and these
were all being laid out over this eleven-month period where they, from Exodus 19
to Numbers 10, just sat in one place, obeying the Lord and learning from Him.
So, I guess if you were looking at it from the standpoint of the annals of the
instruction, chapter 23 would be the Lord’s Word to the Jews, “Save these dates.”
You ever get these “Save the Date” campaign things in the mail? Somebody’s
getting married, somebody’s having a birthday, “Hey, save this date, we’re having a
party.” Well, these are the “save the dates” from the Lord, and He sends them to
His people. “Open your calendars. Mark out the following times. You’re going to
gather with Me and with others, and we’re going to rejoice.” Now, you should know
– in the New Testament there are no “save the dates” at all. The only repeated
practice that the church is given is communion, and even that we are left to follow
as the Lord leads us. “As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you do
show forth My death until I come again” (1 Corinthians 11:26). “As often as you
do..” We meet corporately once a month. Our home studies and others, ministry
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meetings, have them together. The church celebrates Good Friday, we celebrate
Easter, we celebrate Christmas. It’s a good thing for us to be able to turn the
attention of the world’s eyes to the things of God, but you should know that the
Bible doesn’t direct any of those. Those are really not the “save the dates” that
you will find in the Old Testament. But communion, He did.
Well, to see a nation like Israel, in the days in which they lived, standing aside
together in an idolatrous world, joyfully singing, in love with God and with their
family and with one another, it sure kept the nation out there for folks to see
them. And verse 40 of this chapter says they were to be days of rejoicing, “and
you shall rejoice before the LORD your God.” That’s really what God intends. And
I suspect that if the heart of God could be revealed to us tonight, it would be that
God wants you to be filled with His joy. We should have great joy in Him.
Now, of all of these feasts that we’re going to look at tonight, three of them –
Pesach (or Passover), Sukkot (or Tabernacles) and Pentecost (called in Hebrew
Shavuot) require that all men of a certain age and a certain distance from
Jerusalem would come and personally participate for a weeklong celebration with
their families, if possible. And even though there was a demand of a certain
mileage, if you will, the folks that could come, came; especially at times when the
Lord was really at the center of the people’s hearts. So God directed His people to
corporate worship, which is an interesting concept. You wonder sometimes – why
do we sing so much in church? Because God is interested in corporate worship. He
loves it. He loves it. And God wanted His people to gather together and worship.
We need it. And people sometimes say, “Well I didn’t come to church, but I
watched you online.” Well that’s great if you’re sick or if your car broke down or if
you lost your way to church, but it is much better to be in church than watch from
afar. We’re not negating the other. We have people watching all over the country.
We get letters from Germany, from Japan, and we had one from Okinawa the other
day. People watch, and that’s great. But for us, if you can be here, be here! It’s
the way the Lord brought us together.
One final note before we begin, and we will begin. The Jewish calendar is a lunar
calendar; not a solar calendar like ours. And lunar calendars are 354.3 days long in
a year. So most of the months in lunar calendars, and those who use them, are 29
and 30 days long. And in order to stay up with the more accepted, utilized solar
calendar, folks like the Jews, the ancient Egyptians, the Mesopotamians and
others, would randomly throw in a thirteenth month every now and then,
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periodically, just to keep up. So keep that in your mind. And second of all, the
Jews have both a civil and a religious calendar, and we’ll point that out as we get to
the end of one of the verses tonight. But suffice it to say, much like we have a
calendar that goes from January to December, we also have a fiscal calendar; you
might have a school calendar. Israel had a religious calendar and a civil one, and
then they’re on the lunar calendar. So if that isn’t confusing enough, let me see if
I can make it worse as we go.
Verses 1-3, the first feast day – the Sabbath. “ ‘ “And the LORD spoke to Moses,
saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: “The feasts of the LORD,
which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts.” ’ ” The
word “convocation” means “get-together.” “These are holy times for us to get
together. I’m throwing a party. Save the date.” And we begin in verse 3 with the
Sabbath. “ ‘ “Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of
solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the
LORD in all your dwellings.” ’ ” So, feasts of the Lord – number one: Sabbath, held
every week, represents His rest. It happened every week. It was established long
before this. You might remember, if you began reading in your Bible, that God
worked for six days in creation, and on the seventh day, He rested. It wasn’t that
He was tired. He was finished. Right? He rested from His work (Genesis 2:2).
If you are in Israel on a Sabbath, and we are there when we go on our trip every
other year – a couple of Sabbaths usually, you will appreciate it far more, maybe,
than you read it in your Bibles. If you are fortunate enough to be at the Wailing
Wall during the Sabbath, people might actually invite you to their home for dinner
so that they can share with you why they are taking the day off and what the
Sabbath means to them. They work all week, and then they get to Friday
afternoon (which is the Sabbath, at sundown), and everybody kind of slows down.
The stores close early, the workday slows down, everybody heads home. Families
traditionally gather every Sabbath. You dress up. The husband will oftentimes
bring home flowers for his wife on the Sabbath (not a bad practice you guys). But
it brings the focus to the Lord’s blessing on a weekly basis. And from Friday night
at sundown until Saturday night, really nobody goes anywhere. The stores are
closed. You can’t really get anywhere or do anything. We get to travel during the
Sabbath because they do kind of make provision for travelers or vacationers or
pilgrims, if you will. So a lot of the state parks are open where we can get in to
show you things. But forget about shopping. Not until Saturday night. And the
minute the Sabbath breaks, everybody hits town, and they all go out and eat
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together and sing in the streets, and they’re worship songs. It’s an amazing
practice. Now, do the people there all know the Lord? They don’t. But just
imagine if you did and what kind of response that would be.
So, it brought focus to the Lord. Now we have days off, but they usually don’t
reflect the Sabbath rest that God intended for His people. They are days to
catch up on your work – mow the lawn, pay the bills, do the shopping, get the
groceries, and take the kids to soccer or baseball, whatever it is. You can run
yourself ragged, and you can’t wait to go back to work. “Ohh….this day off thing
will wear you out!” Right? So we celebrate our Sabbath on Sundays now – the
church does – due to the Resurrection being on Sunday. But we’re under no
Sabbath law regulation like the nation of Israel was here in the Old Testament. In
fact Paul said (Romans 14:5), “One person esteems one day above another. Another
esteems every day alike. You should just be fully convinced in your own mind.” It
was Jesus who said to the disciples that, “The Sabbath was made for man, and man
wasn’t made for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). It was the other way around. God gave
the Sabbath as a gift to man so that he might just stop in the busyness of life and
be able to, on a weekly basis, acknowledge Him. So it’s a wonderful practice. By
the time you get to the New Testament, unfortunately, the ways of man have so
clouded the idea of this very simple resting in the Lord one day a week, not
working, that the Talmud – the written directions and all – for the Jews devotes
twenty-four chapters to defining what work is and what work is not. Take all that
away, and just say, “Look, this was simply intended by the Lord to give you and your
family and your children a day where you would stop from the labors of the world
and find a day to rest, acknowledging His provision, His love, His goodness, who He
was in your life.” And if you’ll do that, I think it would make a huge difference in
the life of you and your family. But the Sabbath, God’s intention, spoke of rest.
“I’m going to bring life …..I’m going to give you a Sabbath. I want you to just take a
break and rest.”
Verse 4, the Passover, “ ‘ “These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations
which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the
first month at twilight is the LORD’s Passover.” ’ ” The Sabbath speaks of rest.
The Passover speaks of redemption. Now the Passover, you probably remember,
looks back to the last days of Israel’s captivity in Egypt and the last plague that
God brought upon the Pharaoh for his ongoing refusal to let God’s people go. And
He told them that there would be a death in every house of the firstborn in that
house as the passing over of the angel of death would come in God’s judgment
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against man’s rebellion. But if you took a lamb without spot or blemish (and the
criteria are there in the book of Exodus), and you took the blood of that lamb and
put it on the lintels and across the top of your doorpost (it almost would form the
cross), when the angel of death came, he would pass over you, and you would be
spared. The blood would spare the firstborn of the family, and the Lord gave the
directive. And those who obeyed Him were spared, and those that didn’t found His
judgment. You can read about the story in Exodus 12.
Later other things were added that you won’t find in the initial Passover – the
adding of the roasted lamb, for example. That came in later. The “Seder.” The
word “Seder” means “order,” as a meal was developed that would follow not only a
specific order but had items in the meal that were specific to commemorate what
the Lord did that first deliverance, that first Passover. There were bitter herbs
that needed to be eaten. There were four different glasses of wine that
represented the Lord’s work. And there was the breaking of the “matzah” and the
hiding of what was called the “affikomen,” the largest part of that “matzah.”
There was the inevitable question of the children to the father, “Why is this day
unlike any other?” And so the practice itself developed over time.
But suffice it to say that the Passover held two really important roles for the
nation. One was that they were able to look back to commemorate and remind
themselves that God was very good to them, and He brought their redemption. He
saved them. And second of all, the Passover was a predictive or a prophetic feast
day looking forward to the day that the Lamb of God would come, whose blood
would save men’s lives from the judgment of God once and for all. So there was a
looking back – God redeemed; there’s a looking forward – God has promised to do
so.
It is no accident that Jesus died on Passover, as you might well suspect, right?
You look at Exodus 12, you almost expect to see the Lamb of God come as He did.
It is Passover that is linked directly to communion (what we’re going to have
tonight) because it was at a Seder meal, if you will, that Jesus converted the
elements of the Passover and defined them for what they were ultimately intended
for – His body broken and His blood shed. So He took the third cup of redemption
(of those four cups); it was the cup of redemption, and He said, “Take and drink,”
and there was that immediate connection between what they had known for years
and the things that they would now take forward as the church. But His body
broken and His blood shed became the ultimate, and this became the new covenant
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in God’s blood. On that day of deliverance in Egypt, either the blood was on the
doorpost and on the lintel, or you lost your firstborn. There was really no third
category. It was either you were in and you believed Him, and the blood of the
lamb saved you, or you were lost. It is no different today. The lamb without spot
was an atonement. He died in their place to save their life. We have a Savior
tonight who came to take away our sins. And you really don’t have a third choice.
You really can’t go, “Well, I could take Him or leave Him.” No. Then you’ve left
Him. It’s the blood applied or the blood not applied. It’s so black-and-white and so
definitive that you have no place to hide, really. So if tonight you are not saved,
know this. You can get saved tonight just by saying “yes” to Jesus. “Apply Your
blood to my life. Wash my sins. Cover me from the judgment that’s to come.”
So the Sabbath produced rest. The Passover redemption.
Verse 6, “ ‘ “And on the fifteenth day of the same month” ’ ” (now this is the day
after verse 5 – on the fourteenth day) “ ‘ “is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the
LORD; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a
holy convocation; you shall do not customary work on it. But you shall offer an
offering made by fire to the LORD for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy
convocation;” ’ ” (another Sabbath, if you will, extra one) “ ‘ “you shall do no
customary work on it.” ’ ” Now the day after the Passover began a seven-day feast
known as the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Why unleavened bread? Well, again, go
back to the source – Exodus 12. The Lord told Israel to pack up and get moving.
“Eat your meal in haste. We’ve got to go.” And so what would normally have been
bread that could be leavened and would be allowed to rise in the way that you
might normally have eaten it, there was no time. “Just take the unleavened bread
with you. That’s going to have to be your sustenance for now, and let’s get going.”
I don’t know if you’ve ever eaten unsalted “matzah.” I think actually this might be
unsalted “matzah” - the little wafers we use are just that. They are unleavened
bread, flatbread, if you will. But sometimes in the Scriptures when you read, you’ll
read the word “Passover,” and the presumption will be that you realize that
Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are intricately connected. They
follow right on the heels of one another. So, they aren’t always both mentioned
even though they are always both included.
Leaven in the Bible, as a type, is a type of sin. And though not always, most of the
time it is; not always. So be careful with types. But here it seems to speak of the
fact that there is this immediate work when you’re saved; the Lord justifies you
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the moment you believe in Him, doesn’t He? Your slate is clean. The Lord doesn’t
save you and go, “All right. Two weeks of a trial, and if you’re still here, you’re
forgiven.” No. The immediate moment you give your life to Jesus, your life
becomes unleavened, if you will, in that regard; justified so that your sins of the
past and of the present and of the future are put away. It’s immediate, it’s quick,
it’s all His work. But then the minute you get saved, you’ve got to walk out the door
and go home; and you realize that what walks out with you is you. Now you’ve got to
learn to walk with God. You have to learn to be sanctified. It’s a word that means
“to be set apart.” Justified is an immediate work. Immediate. But sanctification
takes your whole life. So the day after I’m saved, I still have my old reactions. I
still have my old outlooks. I still have my old habits. I still have my attitudes.
Right? Now what I have different, though, is now I have the Holy Spirit living in
me – who begins to chip away at the old man and wants to make me a new man. So
like the feasts here, there’s no gap in time between the Holy Spirit beginning to
shape you and the justification that He brings you. So, in the years that followed,
the families would have to scour their home for leaven, we will read, and throw it
out. And that’s kind of what happens when you grow, right? The Lord saves you
immediately – like the Passover. But then there’s this unleavened bread issue.
God’s got to start cleaning your house. He moves in and goes, “Yeah, you’ve got to
get rid of that?” “Why?” “Well, it’s not good. We don’t need that in our lives.”
And so God goes after the hidden areas of sin and the rebellion, and He makes
Himself more and more at home in my life, and like Paul said to the Corinthians in
chapter 5, “A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Therefore purge out the old
leaven, that you may be a new lump” (1 Corinthians 5:6-7). It’s nice to know you’re a
“new lump.” That could be you. So Paul goes on, and he says, “Keep the feast, not
with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:8). I heard it once said
by somebody that Jesus catches His fish, and He immediately starts to clean
them. I guess that’s true. He saves you, you’re justified. But then He begins to
sanctify you. Sabbath, Passover, Feast of Unleavened Bread – His sanctifying
work. And really that’s what unleavened bread is – it’s the sanctifying work of
God’s Spirit cleansing you day by day from the leaven in your life.
The next one, verse 9, the Feast of Firstfruits. “ ‘ “And the LORD spoke to Moses,
saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: “When you come into the
land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the
firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the
LORD, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest
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shall wave it. And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male
lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the LORD.” ’ ”
(That’s an offering of consecration). “ ‘ “Its grain offering shall be two-tenths of
an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the LORD, for a
sweet aroma; and its drink offering shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. You shall
eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you
have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your
generations in all your dwellings.” ’ ”
So notice in verse 10, “when you come into the land.” And this was, again, a feast
established by God, but it was established for what would be forty years from now.
They didn’t know that because they were only four weeks away from the Land of
Promise, had they just gone directly, but they decided to disobey. Anyway, “when
you come into the land and reap its harvest.” Now this was an early-spring festival
depending on, again, the moon. But at the beginning of the barley harvest, the
barley would kick out a firstfruit, if you will. It would begin to show signs of
growth. And the Lord said to the people, “When that firstfruit comes forward, I
want you to gather it together, tie it in a sheaf, bring it to the priest, have him
acknowledge that you know the Lord is providing for you, and wave it before the
Lord. See Him as your provider, and in faith rejoice in His promise to provide all of
your needs – that there’s more to come.” “The firstfruits are Yours, God, but I
trust there’s going to be plenty for us because You’ve already provided this
firstfruit.” Verse 11, it was “offered on the day after the Sabbath.” It was
accompanied with a male lamb for a burnt offering of total devotion that’s
completely burned in the fire. You don’t get any of that back. It says, “I am all
Yours, Lord.” And, along with some grain and wine, nothing was to be eaten until
God was first acknowledged. It’s kind of like tithing. Tithing, in an Old Testament
sense, was an acknowledgement of God’s provision first. That really is what it
boiled down to. So this offering of firstfruits. The Feast of Firstfruits spoke of
the faithfulness of God that is celebrated by His people, in faith. “I give You what
You’ve given me so far and acknowledge that I look to You to provide all that we’re
going to need.”
Spiritually, the idea of this feast and of firstfruits is used by the Lord to assure
us of the Resurrection. In fact Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians, especially
in chapter 15 (you might want to read that tonight), assured them of God’s
faithfulness by saying, “Because He lives, you’ll live. Because He rose, you’ll rise.”
He was the firstfruit. Interesting. He went to heaven. He was accepted before
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the Father. His sacrifice was sufficient. “Now I’m in Christ. I wonder if He’ll
accept me.” If you’re in Christ, you’re in. Because He was accepted, you’ll be
accepted. You are in Christ. So, He is the firstfruits. We’re assured of much
more fruit to come. And that was really the practice in the spring, at the
beginning of the barley harvest.
Verse 15, we go to the Feast of “Shavuot” or Weeks or Pentecost. “ ‘ “And you
shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you
brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed.
County fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new
grain offering to the LORD. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of
two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour;” ’ ” (that means wheat; all the
fine flour in the Bible is wheat) “ ‘ “they shall be baked with leaven. They are the
firstfruits to the LORD. And you shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the
first year, without blemish, one young bull, and two rams.” ’ ” (seems like a lot,
doesn’t it?) “ ‘ “They shall be as a burnt offering to the LORD,” ’ ” (you’re not
getting any of that back) “ ‘ “with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an
offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the LORD. Then you shall sacrifice one
kid of the goats as a sin offering, and two male lambs of the first year as a
sacrifice of a peace offering.” ’ ” (Or an offering of fellowship; you do get some of
that back). “ ‘ “The priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a
wave offering before the LORD, with the two lambs. They shall be holy” ’ ”
(dedicated or set apart; “qodesh” is the word) “ ‘ “to the LORD for the priest.
And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You
shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings
throughout your generations. When you reap the harvest of your land,” ’ ” (this is
the reaping time) “ ‘ “you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you
reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for
the poor and for the stranger:” ’ ” (and then, again, that declaration that we’ve
seen a lot) “ ‘ “I am the LORD your God.” ’ ” “We do things differently around here,
right? This is the way we do things.”
The word “Pentecost” means “fifty,” and this was held fifty days after the
Passover. The word “Shavuot,” which is what it’s called in Hebrew in Israel today,
means “weeks,” and so sometimes this Feast of Pentecost is called the Feast of
Weeks. You’ll hear it referred to in the same manner, but it was celebrated at the
end of the wheat harvest and looked back to see the blessings that God had
brought through the spring and through the early summer. So, much like the first
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feast was anticipatory, this second one would be acknowledging. “God, You’ve given
us so much.” And so you bring much more, don’t you, at the end. You bring a great
portion of what God has blessed you with.
But I want you to notice a couple of things. Number one – the two loaves that you
bring now are with leaven, the firstfruits of the whole crop. You bring them with
leaven along with seven lambs, a bull and two rams and a kid for a sin offering, a
peace offering. And again, another Sabbath, another day where you don’t go to
work. You go to worship. Interesting. And the acknowledgement that God does
what He says. So, as each event finds its fulfillment in the work of Jesus, fifty
days after the Resurrection was Pentecost. It was the day that the church was
officially born, though the apostles and the 120 or so were born again fifty days
earlier. But the Holy Spirit was poured out upon the church, and the preaching of
the gospel began in earnest on the Day of Pentecost, fifty days after the
Resurrection, and 3000 men and women were saved. But they were the firstfruits,
those 3000. This is just a taste of what’s coming. This is just a taste of what the
Holy Spirit is going to do. There are lots of reasonings from different Bible
scholars as to why the two loaves. Many scholars believe that the loaves represent
a church comprised of sinners – both Jew and Gentile; that in Christ we are one in
Him. It’s an interesting thought. I can’t tell you that’s exactly what it means. It’s
open to debate, I guess. But it’s interesting that the bread is made with leaven
here because God saves us, but we’re not sinless, are we? We still have lots that
God needs to deal with us in, and, so Jesus, when He spoke about a parable there in
Matthew 13:33, He said, “The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took
and hid three measures of meal, till it was leavened.” And we do find ourselves, as
sinners, being held by God’s grace. So it’s an interesting concept. I can’t argue
against it, but I wouldn’t want to say to you that’s exactly what it means because I
can’t find the biblical support for it. But know this for sure, that the Feast of
Pentecost is the ingathering. It’s the fruit that is realized. It is the fulfillment of
the time of waiting upon the Lord and seeing what God is going to provide, and once
He has provided, His firstfruits are given to Him, and now, at the end, we
acknowledge that He has more than blessed us. So God wants to be involved in all
of it. Right?
Verse 22 is really a welfare program, and it is placed here because we’re talking
about harvest time. And God’s welfare program in the Old Testament was, “Don’t
pick out every corner, don’t go through the field a second time, don’t go back to
pick up what you’ve dropped or missed. Let the poor. Allow them a place to go and
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glean the land. They have to work, but they can eat.” So it’s much better than the
welfare system today where everyone’s entitled to get handouts, and we vote for
whoever gives us handouts. It’s not a biblical concept. God likes you to work. “If
you don’t work, you don’t eat” (2 Thessalonians 3:10). So He lets you work, even if
you’re in a difficult place. He still wants you to work.
All right. That’s all of the spring and early-summer feasts. In fact, from verse 22
to verse 23, we’re going to skip four months ahead in the calendar, if you will. And
I suspect that the time gap, if you are spiritualizing or seeking to place a spiritual
context on the division, might represent the Church Age - this time between the
69th and the 70th week of Daniel, when God is moving in every heart by the Holy
Spirit and, through the church, reaching out to the world. But the minute the
rapture takes place, God’s attention goes back to Israel as a nation. And this work
that He stopped there, when Jesus gave His life and when the Romans came in, He
will start again. And there will be one more seven-year period (we know it as the
Great Tribulation) where God will work through the nation to call the world to
Himself. But there are more feasts. In other words, we skip four months, but
God’s not done with Israel.
And when the church comes in, we then begin in verse 23 when the church is taken
up, and we go forward to what is called the Feast of Trumpets. Doesn’t that sound
like the rapture to you? “ ‘ “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the
children of Israel, saying: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month,
you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy
convocation. You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering
made by fire to the LORD.” ’ ” So the Feast of Trumpets. In Numbers 10, when we
get there (here in a little while), there will be two silver trumpets used to sound
the alarm for the nation, after eleven months, to get moving. Trumpets in the
Bible were all differently designed to tell so many people what the message was –
whether to move forward, whether to sound the alarm for help, days of gladness,
appointed feasts. There were always trumpets going on. So verse 24, “in the
seventh month, on the first day of the month,” the sound of the trumpet came for
the Feast of Trumpets. And as we read on we suspect that, because of what verse
27 says, this trumpet sound was to remind the people that ten days from now, we
were going to head into the most solemn day of the year, the day of Yom Kippur,
the Day of Atonement. And ten days prior to Yom Kippur, in Israel, is called
“Yamim Noraim.” It literally means the “days of repentance,” and it is still a very
solemn time – but works-driven now, unfortunately.
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But the seventh month is the holiest month in the Jewish calendar. It has
trumpets, Yom Kippur, and tabernacle – all in short order, one following the other.
We mentioned about the civil and the religious calendars. When Passover took
place in Exodus 12, the Lord said to Israel, “This will be the first month for you.”
It became a religious month, a new month, because God was delivering them from
Egypt and giving them a new life, if you will. The month was called Abib or Nisan.
It became their first month of the year. When the children of Israel returned
from the Babylonian captivity in 536 B.C., they came back on the first day of the
seventh month in the month of Tishri, and they celebrated it as Rosh Hashanah,
the new year. So Israel is not only on the lunar calendar, but they have two
calendars they follow – a religious one that begins in Abib or Nisan, if you will, and
then a civil calendar that starts in the seventh month, much like I said we do fiscal
years or those kinds of things.
So we know that the Church Age will end in the rapture, and then we will hear a
trumpet, will we not? “And with the trump of God, the dead in Christ will rise
first” (1 Thessalonians 4:16) “and then we that are alive and remain will be caught
up with Him.” So it’s interesting that the feast days track this work of God from
redemption to the fruit beginning to be gathered to the promise of a Messiah to
now this call to gather. It reminds us of what lies ahead, I think, more than
anything else. But it was an announcement to the Jews, and this time, ten days
from now – Feast of Trumpets.
Verse 26, “ ‘ “And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: ‘Also the tenth day of this
seventh month shall be the Day of Atonement. It shall be a holy convocation for
you; you shall afflict your souls,” ’ ” (no joy here) “ ‘ “and offer an offering made by
fire to the LORD. And you shall do not work on that same day, for it is the Day of
Atonement, to make atonement for you before the LORD your God. For any person
who is not afflicted in soul on that same day shall be cut off from his people.” ’ ” (if
there’s no repentance) “ ‘ “And any person who does any work on that same day,
that person I will destroy from among his people. You shall do no manner of work;
it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. It
shall be to you a sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict your souls; on the
ninth day of the month at evening, from evening to evening, you shall celebrate
your sabbath.” ’ ” We spent an entire week on this in Leviticus 16. Were you with
us? I hope that you were. It was a day of national repentance. It was the only
day that the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies; went in there twice –
once with the blood for his own sin and then afterwards with the blood again for
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the sins of the people. It was the scapegoat. You remember that? The scapegoat
was sent away, and then there was joy when the news got back the scapegoat ran
off with our sin. One died, and one was left to live – really prophetic, of course, of
Jesus’ death on our behalf so that He dies, we live. But for Israel, the feast
looked forward to the day when the nation, God’s nation, will recognize Him as the
Lord. And during the Great Tribulation, when He returns, they’ll see Him, and
they’ll weep for Him, and they’ll realize He was their Messiah. They missed their
Messiah. It’ll be the Zechariah 12:10, “They will mourn for Him as one mourns for
his only son. and grieve for Him as one grieves for a firstborn.” Or in Matthew
24:30 Jesus said, “Then the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven, and then
all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on
the clouds of heaven with power and great glory.” Not Greg Laurie. Great glory.
(Laughing) Don’t let him tell you otherwise. So the Feast of Trumpets, a reminder,
and then the Day of Atonement, certainly a picture of the Lord’s redemption of His
people one day as they’ll recognize Him whom they have rejected.
And then finally the Feast of Sukkot or Tabernacles. Verse 33, “ ‘ “Then the LORD
spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “The fifteenth day
of this seventh month” ’ ” (so you have the first day, the tenth day and the
fifteenth day) “ ‘ “shall be the Feast of Tabernacles for seven days to the LORD.
On the first day there shall be a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work
on it. For seven days you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD. On
the eighth day you shall have a holy convocation, and you shall offer an offering
made by fire to the LORD. It is a sacred assembly, and you shall do no customary
work on it. These are the feasts of the LORD which you shall proclaim to be holy
convocations, to offer an offering made by fire to the LORD, a burnt offering and
a grain offering, a sacrifice and drink offerings, everything on its day – besides the
Sabbaths of the LORD, besides your gifts, besides all your vows, and besides all
your freewill offerings which you give to the LORD. Also on the fifteenth day of
the seventh month, when you have gathered in the fruit of the land, you shall keep
the feast of the LORD for seven days; on the first day there shall be a sabbathrest, and on the eighth day a sabbath-rest. And you shall take for yourselves on
the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, branches of palm trees, the boughs of
leafy trees, and willows of the brook; and you shall rejoice before the LORD” ’ ”
(see, rejoicing again) “ ‘ “your God for seven days. You shall keep it as a feast to
the LORD for seven days in the year. It shall be a statute forever in your
generations. You shall celebrate it in the seventh month. You shall dwell in booths
for seven days. All who are native Israelites shall dwell in booths.” ’ ”
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So, from the first day to the tenth day, and now from the fifteenth day of the
seventh month, a seven-day celebration celebrating God’s wonderful care for forty
years for His people in the wilderness. “God kept us. We survived.” You could say
of the Feast of Tabernacles, at the end of the year, it is a feast that says to the
Lord, “We made it. God did what He said. We’ve arrived.” They arrived in the land
of Canaan. We, one day, will arrive in glory. But here’s what they did. They built
lean-tos or little tents out of trees and all, and they lived with their family outside
for a week - just to acknowledge that God kept them for forty years. I cannot
imagine any kid not loving this feast. As someone who hates camping, I hate the
idea, but I want to relate to the fact that we’re living in tents now. These are not
our homes. Right? And one day we’re going home, and we’re getting a body that’s
got hair and stuff. (Laughing) It was on this feast day, by the way, the Feast of
Tabernacles, that Jesus, in John 7, stood up in verse 37 and cried out, “If any man
thirsts, let him come to Me and drink…out of his innermost being will flow rivers of
living water.” And John said he was speaking about the Spirit which hadn’t been
given yet because He hadn’t been yet glorified. But whoever believed in Him would
receive Him. So faith moves us from the kingdom of this world to God’s kingdom,
and one day we go to heaven, and this tent, which we have lived in, will fall down,
and we’ll get a permanent home. Praise the Lord for that.
But I love verse 40. It says, “You shall rejoice before the LORD,” and you will find
that same word constantly being used. Verse 43 says “ ‘ “that your generations
may know that I made the children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them
out of the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God.” ’ ” (I love how He keeps saying
that). “ ‘ “So Moses declared to the children of Israel the feasts of the LORD.” ’ ”
Look, the key to me is God loved corporate life, and He loved being the center of
attention among His people. And He thought that it would be very beneficial for us
to be reminded. It’s not so bad to look back and remember. It’s just when your
life is only looking back that you’re in trouble. Because these were to be held every
year, you’re to be moving forward not backwards, right?
But I got stuck on this word “rejoice” because it seems to me that some churches
are like attending an autopsy. They’re just…………”Oh, I just barely made it to
church” (whining) ……..”Praise the Lord” And I’m thinking, eighteen times the
Psalmist writes, “Make a joyful shout to the Lord” in the Psalms. Eighteen times.
Like the first eight times you weren’t paying attention, and for the next ten, you
sort of are. “Come on. Make a joyful shout to the Lord!” That’s an amazing
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statement, isn’t it? Bars have happy hours. We were at a restaurant the other
night – I forget where we were. Wherever we were, there was a bar, and we got
sat in it to eat. And it was happy hour, and people were happy. And I looked
around saying, “I wish church was like this.” (Laughing) In a good way, right?
People show up at happy hour to be happy. “Give me a beer. Line up a couple of
drinks. I want to be happy…………wheee!” And we’re going to heaven. And the Lord
said, “Here’s a week, and here’s another week, and here’s another week, and here’s
a couple of sacrifices. You just have a good time. I am the LORD your God.”
Church, to me, is that and more. So a happy God worshipped by happy people can
celebrate communion. Amen?
Submitted by Maureen Dickson
November 5, 2014
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