Many times Christianity has no real sense of itself. We’re so scared to be like the Sadducees and Pharisees our Savior clashed with that we’ve disowned our very heritage. We’ve thrown the proverbial baby out with the bath water. The only problem is that we are the baby in this scenario. We’re throwing ourselves out because we don’t understand what we are.
There’s an entire heritage which we’re only vaguely aware of. There’s a history of traditions which glorify our Creator and His Son. Today we’re going to go over one of these pieces of our history: The Feasts of the LORD.
We’ve just entered into the season of the Fall Feasts so now’s a good time to start looking at them. Actually, it probably would’ve been better to start looking at them a month ago so we could’ve drummed up more interest among ourselves but… I didn’t think of it then…
The truth is that most Christians have a vague idea about the Feasts, and that they would tell you that they were important at the time of Jesus, but they have next to no concept of what these Feasts really are. Most Christians know that Jesus died on Passover, and they could tell you that Jesus’s death on Passover was a fulfillment of prophecy. And they could tell you that Passover was originally instituted because when Israel was in Egypt the LORD saved the Israelites by passing them over when the first born in Egypt were killed. Some Christians may even point out to you that while the firstborn of Egypt were killed it was the firstborn of God who was sacrificed in order to save the rest of us. But that’s really where the understanding of most would end.
And then there’s the other Feast that most Christians would’ve at least heard of, even if they’re not entirely certain what it is: Pentecost.
The average Christian would probably be able to tell you that Pentecost is the day that the Holy Spirit was given to the Church. Some would even say that Pentecost is the day that the Church was born, and that before that day it was a mystery never before revealed. When you look into what Pentecost is (and was from the time it was first instituted by the LORD) that description shows a poor understanding of who God is and what the Church is. But, for right now, that’s beside the point. Pentecost is one of the Feasts of the LORD, even if it’s called something different (Shavuot).
Then there are those Christians who would be able to tell you that the life and ministry of our Messiah was a fulfillment of the Spring Feasts. Some of them may even be able to tell you that these Spring Feasts (Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, and Pentecost) each were fulfilled by Jesus. Jesus died as our Passover; He was placed into the grave on Unleavened Bread; He was resurrected on First Fruits as the first fruit of the coming harvest; And He gave us His Holy Spirit which would bring to remembrance the Torah of the LORD on the celebration of the day that God gave His Torah all those years ago on Mount Sinai.
And these things said about the Spring Feasts are all true, even if there’s SOOO much more to them than that. If you have that understanding of the Spring Feasts, you’re in a good place to move forward. But how many of us know that much about the Fall Feasts? If the Spring Feasts were all significant in the first coming of our Messiah, should we not also assume that the Fall Feasts might be important as well? And, since these are the ones that we’re actually supposed to be looking forward to the fulfillment of, shouldn’t we want to know as much as possible about them? Shouldn’t we have a passion in our bellies to know what they are? If every little thing about the Spring Feasts is symbolic about something that Jesus did for us, what is it that the Fall Feasts are going to tell us about Him?
Quick, name the three Fall Feasts…
I want to give most Christians the benefit of the doubt on this one so I’m going to say that you probably got two out of three. I’m sure that there are some of you that got all three and if I had the ability to give you a cookie, I would definitely do that. Actually, since you’re reading this on the internet, you’ve already gotten a cookie from visiting this website. Well done! Until I started looking more into all of this stuff, I could’ve told you that Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur were two of the feasts (not because I really knew it but because I remember seeing them on the calendar…) and I probably would’ve said that the third was Hanukah. If you actually look into the origins of Hanukah then you realize that this guess isn’t too far off, but it’s still not an actual Feast of the LORD. The funny thing about the missing Feast is that it’s the only one which the common name (Passover instead of Pesach, Pentecost instead of Shavuot…) for actually has the word ‘feast’ in it. Sukkot is this final Feast but it’s better known as the Feast of Tabernacles.
Over the next few days we’re going to take a look at these Fall Feasts and see what we can glean about what are Messiah will be doing next. We’ll check out some of the fun traditions that we could all try to add into our lives to get a better understanding of our Father in Heaven.
This was originally posted on my personal blog site linked below:
http://thepoiema.blogspot.com/2017/09/the-forgotten-feasts-introduction.html