(part 1) By John Boda from the old archives! As I
write this letter we are winding down from the "Dog Days" of summer. It
has been a beautiful and seemingly long season this year! Our
summer months go from mid-July to mid-September, three months, but did
you know that God has a summer as well? His summer months last a lot
longer! In fact, God has been enjoying the dog days of summer for about
2000 years now, and counting! Do you think I've gone overboard? Wonder
what I'm I talking about? Want scriptural support? Hold on...
let's take a brief look at one of the most amazing chapters in the
Bible: Leviticus 23. If God does have a calendar it is found in Leviticus Chapter 23! In it, God presents seven feasts which Israel was to observe. Each feast commemorated an historical work of God and/or His provision for Israel. In addition to that, for those "with ears to hear" (Rev. 3:22), and eyes to see with eye salve (Rev. 3:18), each feast is a clear type of God's redemptive moves through Jesus Christ Our Lord. Four of the seven feasts have already been fulfilled exactly on the day they are observed, by Christ, and three more are yet to be fulfilled, and will surely come soon! We are on solid scriptural ground to look at these feasts in "type" because Paul says, In reference to them, that they are "a shadow of things to come, but the substance is of Christ." (Colossians 2:17) Right now
in God's calendar we are in the end of the summer months. The next feast
in line is the Feast of Trumpets, now called Rosh Hashana ("the
head of the year"), which Paul clearly links with the rapture and the
"catching away" of true believers to meet the Lord! (1Cor 15:51,52) But
I'm getting ahead of myself; let's look briefly at the first feast:
Passover. In Leviticus 23:1, 4-6 we see the first of seven feasts that God appointed for Israel to observe. The first, Passover, is the most important Jewish festival, or feast. It has been called The Holy Day, and Jewish people all over the world still observe and celebrate this feast today. It is commemorative of the miraculous night when God liberated Israel from Egyptian bondage and slavery (see Exodus 12). The firstborn male lamb without blemish was to be slain, eaten, and its blood put on the door posts of the houses. When the destroyer came to slay the first-born children and animals, The Lord would "pass over" the door and not allow the destroyer to come into any house that had the blood on the doorposts, and would spare them from death. (Ex 12:23) As much as possible, one should always allow the Bible to interpret itself. So to say that this passover lamb was a type of christ is not only sound interpretation, it's the clear spiritual application the Holy Spirit wants us to see! In 1Cor 5:7 we are told: "For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us" John tells in Jn 1:29 "Behold the lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world". The
parallels between the Passover lamb and Christ are absolutely
astounding! For instance: the According
to Jn 19:14, Christ was crucified on "the Day of Preparation" of the
Passover. And The next feast follows Passover immediately the next day and is called Unleavened Bread (Lev 23:6). Leaven in the Bible is a symbol of sin. Jesus told us to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees (Lk 12:1). The only bread to be eaten during this time was flat, unleavened bread called "matzah" which itself has some amazing symbolism to Christ! The design that was on the matzah was one of perforations. These holes were made by bakers using a sharp toothed wheel called a redel, which they rolled across the dough to prevent rising. ("they shall look upon Me whom they have pierced" Zech 12:10) Pressing lines on the matzah produced "striping". ("by His stripes we are healed" Is 53:5) To this day in Jewish Passovers the matzah must be striped and pierced to be kosher! The feast of Unleavened Bread to the Jews is observed as a purging of sin (leaven) during the Passover time to more fully devote themselves to the Lord. Again the Bible itself links this to Christ in 1Cor 5:6-8, where Christ is our Passover and speaks of us as believers in Christ, we are actually unleavened bread, because Christ Himself was the pure striped and pierced unleavened bread born in Bethlehem ("the house of bread") and Himself said "I am the bread of life." Jn 6:48. In a Passover Seder, at one point the matzah is taken and broken into three pieces. The middle piece, called the Afikomen, is then wrapped in a cloth and hidden somewhere in the house. Then after the third cup of wine, all the children are sent to find the hidden (buried) middle (Son of God) unleavened matzah! When they find it, they all rejoice and all are required to eat it! What is even more amazing is that this ceremony of the Afikomen was not originated by ancient Jewish tradition or scripture - but developed from the middle of the first century and its origins are Christian! Afikomen is the only Greek word in an entirely Jewish ceremony! According to researchers the word means "I came"!!!! So we see
that even today during Jewish passovers, God continues to reveal His Son
to the Jewish Christ
fulfilled the Passover by being the Passover Lamb, He fulfilled the
Unleavened Bread by The next feast which is the third and last spring feast was First Fruits. (Lev. 23:10) This was given so the people would remember to honor and glorify God with their first fruits in their new land. It involved beautiful wave offerings by the priests. Again the Bible is clear on the spiritual fulfillment of First Fruits. In 1Cor 15:20 it says "But now Christ is risen from the dead and has become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep." Jesus is the First Fruits from the dead! We who are believers, even though we all die, will be raised up, as He was, to be with Him! (Rom 8:11) Again God's timing is perfect! The Bible states that the Feast of First Fruits was to be the first day after the Sabbath which followed Passover (Lev. 23:11), which means it was observed on a different day each year. According to researchers who studied this and used the ancient Jewish calendar, at the time of Christ's crucifixion, which occurs on the Preparation day of Passover, the next day was the Unleavened Bread Feast, where He was in the tomb for three days and three nights. First Fruits at that time occurred exactly three full days later on Sunday - which is the exact day that Christ rose from the dead! So
again we see Jesus completely fulfilling this feast as He is our
First Fruits , exactly on time in This next feast is observed fifty days after Firstfruits. In the New Testament days this became known as "Pentecost" (fifty days), when the disciples all gathered on this day - (Acts 2:1 "When the day of Pentecost had fully come...") Historically this feast was observed to give praise and glory to God for the full early harvest just before the summer months. According to Lev. 23:16-21, the priests would make a wave offering of two loaves of bread: one loaf with leaven and one without. The two loaves that were waved represent the church. The unleavened loaves represent God's people Israel, those who are true believers in Christ (remember, the early church was almost all Jewish!). The leaven loaf (leaven represents sin) is symbolic of the Gentiles who would be joined into the church - cleansed and purified by Christ's blood (Rom 3:29). The priests also performed a wave offering of two lambs (again representing God's people) called a fellowship or peace offering. (See Ephesians 2:14-18!) Acts 2:39 clearly shows that pentecost was the beginning of God's salvation to both Jew and gentile, thus fulfilling God's original call to Abraham, where all people would be blessed through him (Genesis 12:3). This
feast found its spiritual fulfillment in Acts 2, at Pentecost, when God
poured out the Holy The first four feasts of the seven stated in Leviticus 23, have all seen their spiritual fulfillment. The first three: Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits are called the Spring Feasts, occuring during the spring season. The fourth feast, The Feast of Weeks (observed 50 days after First Fruits) occurs at the beginning of summer. Each one of these, as we have seen, has been fulfilled by a particular work of Christ. Before we look at the final three yet-to-be-fulfilled fall feasts we must take a look at a very strange hiatus! As we continue our pursuit in Lev. 23, we now come to a verse which seems to be an interruption and a change of subject matter in the middle of a chapter detailing instructions on the feasts to be observed. The verse in focus is Lev. 23:22 "When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleanings from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger; I am the LORD your God." The text then continues with specific instructions for the next feast. What is the significance of this seemingly out of place command? This
strange gap of one verse occurs within a three-month break between
feasts, during the It is
important to understand that these seven feasts are Jewish and were
given to Israel. However, as we have seen, their spiritual fulfillment
in Christ is for everyone who is a true believer in the Lord Jesus
Christ, Jew and gentile. The Church Age is but a "parenthesis" in the
total time period that God has ordained for the Jews! The beginning of
this "parenthesis", which initiated the Church Age, or "the Times of the
gentiles" suspended the Jewish era. The church "parenthesis" began at
Pentecost and So what is the meaning and application of the summer months interlude in Lev. 23:22? First of all, it means that as we are still in those "summer months" continuing for nearly 2,000 years, the time of the gentiles. God has not and will not forsake the Jewish people, but right now God's focus is to draw everyone from all over the world who will simply accept by faith the free gift of grace provided by the Lord Jesus (Eph 2:8,9). It is God's eternal purpose that there be abundant fruit left for "the poor and alien" from every land. Like Ruth, millions of souls have gleaned in the fields of Bethlehem and have found their kinsman redeemer - Jesus Christ! (see the book of Ruth) This
gleaning time also means that since there is still abundant provision
for all, and God's longest I am going to pause here in my presentation of God's Longest Summer - the Feasts of Israel. Part two will be coming in a couple of weeks, just in time for the actual beginning of this year's fall feasts, also called "the Days of Awe", which begin Fri. Sept. 29th with the Feast of Trumpets! This next
feast: the Feast of Trumpets, as we will see, is a beautiful type of the
rapture of the church - the next event scheduled in God's calendar! If
the Lord continues to spiritually fulfill the feasts exactly on the day
they are observed, as He did with the first four, and if this is the
year of His More to come
(if we're still here!) * I am not and
will never set dates for Christ's soon return. This and other concerns
will be addressed |