I probably am sounding like gibberish to you as I talk about the LORDs Feast when everything is talking Easter so let me explain briefly as best I can. Please bear with me, your patience will be rewarded :-) First let me explain that what we know of as Jewish Holidays are not just for Jews but named after them because they were the people to whom God FIRST gave His statutes and they have observed it since. These Jewish Holidays are actually the LORDs Feasts. God said so Himself in Leviticus 23. The LORD said to Moses, 2 “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘These are MY appointed festivals, the appointed FESTIVALS OF THE LORD, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies. Now you might say, God said Israelites - well, Israelites are the descendants of Abraham, his seeds. Galatians 3:29 declares, If you belong to Christ, then you are Abrahams seed, and heirs according to the promise. Are you a descendant of Abraham and a child of the promise through faith in Christ? I am; therefore the LORD is addressing me also through my ancestors in faith when He gave the commands about observing His feasts. I am, however, NOT bound to observe it as tradition like the Jews but by choice; according to the directives given by God in the Bible as best as I know how and am capable. Just like the Ten Commandments was given to Moses for the children of Israel but has served as the guiding principle of what is right and wrong for ALL the world, an unwritten law in the hearts of all men, so are the given feasts for ALL of us who claim YHWH as our God. We cannot claim the status AND benefits of being a legally adopted son without embracing all of Him and His. That is like pledging citizenship to the United States of America but choosing only to obey and observe laws and directives that we know and convenient to follow, and rejecting to learn and embrace its principles. The Jewish people are channels of God, His holy witness. It is THROUGH them that we received Christ. It is THROUGH them that we know the history of all and the future of mankind. The Feasts of the LORD are not merely celebrations to commemorate what was, they are actually a dress rehearsal of major events in the history of mankind. We are missing so much because we have failed to give ears to what YHWH clearly stated as laws for His children. The LORDs feasts are foreshadows of what was and is yet to come. The Spring feasts have been fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Christ. We are now on the Pentecost Feast, when the Spirit of God is sent to mankind to empower His church. The Fall feasts gives us a clue of the age to come. How are the Spring feasts connected to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ? I am going to attempt to share with you what the LORD has shown me as I read His Word in conjunction to other teachings He has exposed me to. 1. Passover commemorates the sacrifice of Christ and the shedding of His precious blood to save mankind from sin. On the night of the first Passover the night before the Israelites walked out of Egypt to freedom, God pronounced His judgement to all false Gods and demonstrated His sovereignty over all by killing all the first-born of Egypt, both humans and animals. But before that, he told the Israelites to kill an unblemished LAMB and mark their doorposts with the BLOOD of the LAMB so He will PASSOVER their houses and spare them. The death of Christ which the world commemorates today as Good Friday is actually the REALIZATION of the feast of Passover. Jesus is the lamb who was slain to mark the door posts of our hearts so God will spare us from His wrath. Only those who believe that ONLY the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God, has the power to redeem us from the wrath of God, will be spared. The blood of Christ is the mark that the Father will look for to see who belongs to Him. The Bible clearly tells us that Jesus died before the beginning of the Feast of Passover, which is a High Shabbat (a day of rest because of the feast, not the regular Shabbat on Saturday). He died about the time when an unblemished lamb was being killed as part of the directions God gave to Moses to commemorate that they had to spread their door posts with its blood. YHWH gave the unblemished blood of His own beloved Son to atone for our sins and satisfy the requirements for forgiveness and restoration. 2. The Feast of Unleavened Bread begins the day after Passover. In it God directs us not to eat anything with leaven and clean our houses of any leaven. Leaven is symbolic of sin in the Bible. After Jesus shed His blood to spare us, we are to refrain from sinning (not to eat leavened bread). Cleaning our houses of leaven is symbolic of ridding ourselves of sin. The Jews have a ceremony for searching and sweeping every corner of their house of leaven. In the same way, we are to search ourselves of our sins and repent and rid ourselves of it. 3. On the Feast of First Fruits - God ask for offerings of the first fruits of harvest when the Israelites reach the promised land. He asked to wave the sheaf of first fruits. He asked offerings of a lamb, flour mixed with oil (which makes bread), and wine - fruit of the vine. Did you notice that all the offerings He asked for are symbols that point to Jesus? According to the Bible Jesus is the Lamb of God, the Bread of Life, and the Vine. Feast of First Fruits signifies Resurrection Day! It is when Jesus presents to the Father the FIRST FRUITS - the harvest from His sacrifice. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the FIRST FRUITS of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the FIRST FRUITS, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. 1 Corinthians 15:20-23 When Jesus was resurrected, He opened the tombs of the righteous as if to present them to the Father as the first harvest for His sacrifice. The tombs also were opened. And many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many. (Matt. 27:52-53) The best news for us is we are part of the harvest! Because Jesus shed His blood for us and we receive by faith His eternal redemption, in the fulfillment of the Feast of Tabernacles, we go home to our Fathers barn as the tares are burned in everlasting fire. The story of Exodus is the story of a people in bondage because their God turned their face away from them because of their sins. The story of Exodus is our story today as sinners who need the mercy and might of our God to rescue us from the consequences of our sin which is living dead. We are all in bondage of some form, prisoners of the life we live - financial burdens, relationship troubles, sickness and diseases, purposeless existence. Our life is an endless cycle of working to eat and buy so we can have the means to live until our body gives and we end up in a grave. However, few of us recognize this state of living dead because we have never known what it really means to have LIFE. Like the Israelites, we have settled to merely exist for the sake of breathing another day in the only world we know. Jesus came to rescue us from living dead. The thief (Satan) comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10 Just as Pharaoh resisted giving freedom to his slaves, so is Satan not just going to let us go off his grip of disease and sickness, backbreaking labor, spiritual maladies, mental torments, dilapidating poverty, endless fears, worries, stress etc. Pharaohs army was too big and too strong for us the Israelites to fight so God Himself delivered them with His strong arm. He sent His own Son to redeem us and pay the price for our freedom. Is there any love greater than that? For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16 The Bible said that a blood sacrifice must be given to atone for sins and that is why the Israelites offer animal sacrifices. But see, as humans born in sin, we constantly sin even against our will. We can slaughter all the animals in the world and still not have enough to be forgiven as we keep sinning. Only a blood worth more than all the world combined can ever pay for the sins of all humans who was ever born and will ever be born completely. Thus, Jesus offered Himself to become flesh and pay the ultimate price for the sin of all mankind. Today the Jews no longer make animal sacrifices. Their reason is because they no longer have a temple where they can sacrifice. They did not receive the message of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus so they fail to see that the temple is no longer made of stone but of flesh - ours, the body of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit. Now did I make any sense to you? Do you see the correlation between the Feasts of the LORD to what we call Holy Week? Please say YES if you do :-)
Posted on: Fri, 18 Apr 2014 14:41:41 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015