Deuteronomy 16:16: “Three times a year all men from your community
must appear before the Lord your
God at the place he will choose: at the Festival of
Unleavened Bread, the
Festival of Weeks (Pentecost) and the Festival of Tabernacles. No man should
appear before the Lord empty-handed.”
In the Photographic World we talk about
RGB colour. Red, blue and green are the 3 primary colours which are surrounded
by 4 others: Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, the seven main colours. Like the rainbow there are 3 primary
feasts and 4 supporting feasts.
The Feasts are
historical, prophetic, typological and experiential. We study them because they
bring descriptive clarity to our relationship with God and foreshadow the
progress of the Church. Said another way, the feasts find their fulfilment in
both Israel and Jesus Christ and His Church.
1 Corinthians 10:6 & 11: “Now these things
occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as
they did. 11 These things happened
to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us, on whom
the culmination of the ages has come.”
Israel typified the Church in the
Wilderness as they camped in a cross formation around the Tabernacle. (Numbers 2) This is prophetical of Jesus
and early Church: the means and essentials of our New Testament faith and worship
were instituted through the centrality of the Cross. Stephen draws the parallel
in his great sermon in
Acts 7:37-38: “This is the same Moses
who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your
own people.’ He was in the assembly (Church) in the wilderness, (God’s
process) with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he
received living words to pass on to us.” John
1:14 points out that “Jesus ‘Tabernacled’ among us...”
The
order of the Feasts is set out in Leviticus
23:4-44.
- The Feast of
Passover Leviticus 23:4-5
- The Feast of
Unleavened Bread Leviticus 23:
6-8
- The Feast of
Firstfruits Leviticus 23:9-14
These 3
Feasts occurred in the First Month of a year. The 3 speaks of tri-unity.
- The Feast of
Pentecost Leviticus 23:15-22
This stand-alone
Feast occurred in the 3rd Month of the year.
- The Feast of Trumpets
Leviticus 23:25
- The Feast Day
of Atonement Leviticus 23:26-32
- The Feast of
Tabernacles Leviticus 23:33-44
These 3 Feasts occurred in the 7th month
of the year. Again they typify the triune God.
The simple premise of the feasts was for fellowship
and recognised the costs and difficulties of bringing a whole people to one
location for what we would now call Church.
In our “driven”
Western culture we cannot easily relate to the lifestyle of Jesus’ times,
however it is important that we do not miss the essential truths of many
amazing details. God delights in fellowshipping among us and we are in danger
of losing this refreshing component of our faith. In John 5:1 we note that the ‘Feasts of Israel’ had de-generated to
‘Feasts of the Jews.’ They had broken the feasts down into a traditional system
of religious observance that brought tax money to the Temple and control of the
masses.
Thankfully, in Jesus
times people never had wrist watches, cell-phones or busy schedules. They spent
considerable time getting together over food and drink which was a cornerstone
of the culture. Much of what Jesus taught was delivered at the dinner table. It
seems that food and teaching are connected. Our modern lack of the sense of
community makes this difficult.
Apart from the 7
Feasts, there were numerous other feasts instituted to memorialize events such
as Purim, Hanukkah, Dedication, Jubilee and New Moon. Some of these came later
and had differing names. Of course every Sabbath (7th day) is a feast day also.
While there was a different purpose and significance to each feast day, they
were special days of fellowship with the Lord. All of them seek to memorialize
some aspect of Gods deliverance from sin and transition to His Kingdom. It is
part of the nature of the Lord to desire to “feast” with us.
In the early days of
the ‘Charismatic Movement’ in the 60’s and 70’s, we saw that fellowship played
a vital role in sharing the experience of the Holy Spirit with other believers.
It was easy to imagine how the Early Church in bible times was able to expand
so rapidly. Things began to fade contiguous with the rise of Pentecostal
denominationalism which was fuelled by the ambitions of men. Other existing
denominations responded by pretending to accommodate these renegades or
offering special services etc. Their motive was as always, assimilation.
God wants us to open
our hearts and homes to each other again and let His love be shared. We all
live such busy, insular, individual and un-neighbourly lives nowadays. To get
people together to fellowship is difficult and we are all guilty of selfish
responses to invitations in ways that reflect lives that are loveless and
lonely. Maybe we need to institute special feast days or events again that
involve the whole group we associate with.
As believers, we are
not required to observe ‘special days’ (Galatians
4:10). Christmas and Easter are such supposedly Christian feast days and interestingly we now have strong
religious traditions surrounding them. Where did all this stuff come from? None
of it is required of believers in the Bible. The early Church had no such
practice. The religious part came from Rome AD.350 and the rest developed in
the 1820’s. The customs of Christmas and Easter are
modern inventions that have become a tradition much like the special days
observed in ‘Lent’. These are good but not specifically sanctioned by scripture.
365 days of the year
we are “called into fellowship with Jesus.” 1Corinthians 1:9-10 stresses that this is not a ‘me only’ thing. We
are made part of something that is Global and encompassing of all those weird
and wonderful people the Lord loves.
No comments:
Post a Comment