Nehemiah 13:17-18 17 Then I contended with the nobles of Judah, and said unto them, What evil thing [is] this that ye do, and profane the sabbath day? 18 Did not your fathers thus, and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the sabbath. "B. The Confrontation i. The nobles of Judah were the upper crust and the influential: a. The nobles were lazy and did not help with the work (3:5) b. Nehemiah had trouble with them before in the loan scandal they were involved in (5:7) c. They were compromisers with Tobiah (6:17) [sent letters to Tobiah] ii. Nehemiah’s message: a. Didn’t you learn from history? Did not your fathers thus, b. Don’t you know that God has judged before and will do so again? and did not our God bring all this evil upon us, and upon this city? c. Don’t you understand what you have done is profane (defile, pollute, desecrate) this holy day by your actions? yet ye bring more wrath upon Israel by profaning the Sabbath. A. Our worship together has precedent i. The early church met on this day (Sunday) • Acts 2:1 - And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. - Pentecost means “fiftieth.” It is the New Testament name for the Feast of Weeks (Ex. 34:22–23), or Harvest (Ex. 23:16), which was celebrated fifty days after Passover. In post-exilic Judaism, it also celebrated the giving of the Law to Moses. The Spirit’s coming on that day was linked to the pattern of feasts in the Old Testament. God’s redemptive New Testament timetable is pictured in the feasts of Leviticus 23. The first great feast mentioned in that chapter is Passover. The killing of the passover lamb pictured the death of Jesus Christ, the ultimate Passover Lamb (1 Cor. 5:7). A second feast was the Feast of Unleavened Bread, celebrated on the day after Passover. During that feast, an offering of the first fruits of the grain harvest was made. Leviticus 23:15 commands that offering to be made on the day after the sabbath. The Sadducees and Pharisees differed on what that sabbath was. The Sadducees interpreted it as the weekly sabbath, and hence the grain offering would always be on a Sunday. The Pharisees interpreted the sabbath as the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. According to that interpretation, the grain offering would always fall on the same day of the month but not the same day of the week. Until the destruction of the Temple in A.D. 70, the Sadducees’ interpretation was normative for Judaism (F. F. Bruce, The Book of the Acts [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971], 53 n. 3). Hence, the day the first fruits were offered would have been on Sunday. That provides an apt picture of the Lord Jesus Christ’s resurrection as the “first fruits of those who are asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20). Fifty days after the first Sunday following Passover, the Feast of Pentecost was celebrated (Lev. 23:15ff.). At Pentecost, another offering of first fruits was made (Lev. 23:20). Completing the cycle of the typical fulfillment of the feasts, the Spirit came on Pentecost as the first fruits of the believers’ inheritance (cf. 2 Cor. 5:5; Eph. 1:13–14). Further, those gathered into the church on that day were the first fruits of the full harvest of believers to come. God sent the Spirit on Pentecost, then, following the pattern of Leviticus 23, not in response to any activity of men. (John MacArthur, MacArthur’s New Testament Commentary, Acts 1-12)" A Day set Aside. Johnson, Nathan. 2009
Posted on: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 18:20:51 +0000