“Beginning With Moses, Part 8” by Romans
Youtube Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUnDKD1NMH4
We are continuing our Series "Beginning With Moses." On the Road to Emmaus, Jesus caught up with and spoke with two disciples who were sad and perplexed about the arrest, crucifixion and resurrection reports about Jesus, the One Whom they "trusted that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel” (Luke 24:21). In response to their sadness and confusion, Jesus opened the Scriptures to them. We read, “And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27).
First, tonight, Jesus may well have included in His review of the things that concerned Himself, the Holy Days that were observed by ancient Israel. As Christians, we look to the New Testament and recognize that the Day of Pentecost was a significant Holy Day. In fact, it was so important that we still observe because it is a Holy Day that has historical New Testament significance: it is the Birthday of the Church.
But how many of us are aware the Pentecost, meaning “count 50,” was a Holy Day that was commanded and observed by the Jews for at least 13 Centuries before the Church was born? It was commanded and its specific observance was first described all the way back in Leviticus 23. That is why there were so many Jews assembled in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost. When the disciples preached the Gospel to these assembled Jews, they all, from all their different locations, understood their preaching in their own language!
And their response demonstrated their shock of their all being able to understand Peter: They asked, “And how hear we every man in our own tongue, wherein we were born? Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judaea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and strangers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we do hear them speak in our tongues the wonderful works of God” (Acts 2:8-11).
There were three Holy Days or Festival Seasons that God commanded that every man was obligated to observe where God placed His Name. That command is found in Exodus 23, just a few chapters after God gave the Ten Commandments in Exodus 20. Israel was an agrarian society. Notice how the commands to observe the Holy Days are timed and interwoven with harvesting the fruit from the fields, and the labor involved in gathering in the harvests:
“Three times thou shalt keep a feast unto me in the year. Thou shalt keep the feast of unleavened bread: (thou shalt eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded thee, in the time appointed of the month Abib; for in it thou camest out from Egypt: and none shall appear before me empty:) ...
And the feast of harvest, the firstfruits of thy labours, which thou hast sown in the field: and the feast of ingathering, which is in the end of the year, when thou hast gathered in thy labours out of the field. Three times in the year all thy males shall appear before the Lord GOD” (Exodus 23:14-17).
Next consider how Jesus applied a spiritual dimension to physical harvests that were so much a part of the Israelite economy: In Samaria, after the woman at the well left her water pot to go and call the men of Sychar, He told His disciples, “Say not ye, There are yet four months, and then cometh harvest? behold, I say unto you, Lift up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35).
Of this, Albert Barnes tells us, “Lift up your eyes - See the Samaritans coming to hear the gospel. They are white - Grain, when ripe, turns from a green to a yellow or light color, indicating that it is time to reap it. So here were indications that the gospel was effectual, and that the harvest was to be gathered in. Hence, we may learn: 1. That there is as much encouragement to attempt to save souls as the farmer has to raise a crop.
2. That the gospel is fitted to make an immediate impression on the minds of men. We are to expect that it will. We are not to wait to some future period, as if we could not expect immediate results. This wicked and ignorant people - little likely, apparently, to be affected - turned to God, heard the voice of the Saviour, and came in multitudes to him.
3. We are to expect revivals of religion. Here was one instance of it under the Saviour’s own preaching. Multitudes were excited, moved, and came to learn the way of life.
4. We know not how much good may be done by conversation with even a single individual. This conversation with a woman resulted in a deep interest felt throughout the city, and in the conversion of many of them to God. So, a single individual may often be the means, in the hand of God, of leading many to the cross of Jesus.
5. What evils may follow from neglecting to do our duty! How easily might Jesus have alleged, if he had been like many of his professed disciples, that he was weary, that he was hungry, that it was esteemed improper to converse with a woman alone, that she was an abandoned character, and there could be little hope of doing her good!
How many consciences of ministers and Christians would have been satisfied with reasoning like this? Yet Jesus, in spite of his fatigue and thirst, and all the difficulties of the case, seriously set about seeking the conversion of this woman. And behold what a glorious result! The city was moved, and a great harvest was found ready to be gathered in! “Let us not be weary in well-doing, for in due season we shall reap if we faint not.”
In another place where He also applied a spiritual dimension to physical harvests, Jesus said, “The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest” (Luke 10:2).
Of this, Matthew Henry writes, “The instructions he gives them. They must set out with prayer (Luke 10:2); and, in prayer, (1.) They must be duly affected with the necessities of the souls of men, which called for their help. They must look about, and see how great the harvest was, what abundance of people there were that wanted to have the gospel preached to them and were willing to receive it, nay, that had at this time their expectations raised of the coming of the Messiah and of his kingdom.
There was corn ready to shed and be lost for want of hands to gather it in. Note, Ministers should apply themselves to their work under a deep concern for precious souls, looking upon them as the riches of this world, which ought to be secured for Christ. They must likewise be concerned that the labourers were so few.
The Jewish teachers were indeed many, but they were not labourers; they did not gather in souls to God's kingdom, but to their own interest and party. Note, Those that are good ministers themselves wish that there were more good ministers, for there is work for more. It is common for tradesmen not to care how few there are of their own trade; but Christ would have the labourers in his vineyard reckon it a matter of complaint when the labourers are few.
(2.) They must earnestly desire to receive their mission from God, that he would send them forth as labourers into his harvest who is the Lord of the harvest, and that he would send others forth; for, if God send them forth, they may hope he will go along with them and give them success. Let them therefore say, as the prophet (Isaiah 6:8), Here I am, send me. It is desirable to receive our commission from God, and then we may go on boldly.
Seeing, now, their spiritual application, let's return to the details of the observance of the Holy Days (also called “Annual Sabbaths”). They were not only types of the Life, death and Resurrection of Christ, they were also astounding prophetic foreshadows of God's Plan of Salvation, foreshadows of the establishment of the Church, and foreshadows of Jesus coming to this earth to establish the Kingdom of God on this earth.
As Christians, however, we are not well-versed in whole list of the Holy Days or Annual Festivals except for the Passover and Pentecost. And even then, few are aware that Pentecost was observed before we read of it in Acts chapter 2. Notice how it is described, there: “And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place” (Acts 2:1). It was a Day that was a regular and expected feature of the Hebrew Calendar.
But what of the other Holy Days and seven Annual Festivals? They were not directly about firstfruits and harvests, but each of them contain great significance for us as types of Christ, and as prophetic foreshadows of God's Salvation Itinerary.
In this Part 1, we will look at what has been right in front of all of our eyes, and right in front of the eyes of Seminaries and Christian ministers and teachers for centuries, but were set aside and overlooked because God commanded Israel to observe them in the Old Testament. They were written off as lacking in significance and value for New Testament Christians. Ask yourself: Were the Annual Festivals ever listed and explained to you in any sermons you have ever heard?
In Leviticus 23, God enumerates what He calls “My Feasts.” We read God's words to Moses: “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, Concerning the feasts of the LORD, which ye shall proclaim to be holy convocations, even these are my feasts” (Leviticus 23:2). They are not the Feasts of men, or of the Israelites. God tells us they are His Feasts.
Now, before there is any misunderstanding about what I will be teaching, tonight, I am not saying that New Testament Christians are obligated to observe these Feasts. Yes, they are God's Feasts, but, along with circumcision and animal sacrifices and the Levitical diet, they were intended to be observed by Israel under the terms of the Old Covenant. Christians are not obligated to observe the tenets of the Old Covenant. This freedom for us from those tenets was established once and for all at the first Church Conference as described in Acts 15.
In the remainder of Leviticus 23, God lists His commands to Israel for the observance of His Holy Days and Festivals. The first Day listed is the weekly Seventh-day Sabbath in verse 3. Briefly, the Sabbath was a bird's eye view of God's entire Calendar and Plan of Salvation. Man was to work for six days, and the Seventh Day was the Sabbath of the Lord.
Applying Peter's explanation of how to understand some (not all) prophecies, “But, beloved, be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). With that in mind, man has been working for 6,000 years, governing himself, establishing his own laws and priorities and cultures, all of which not only operate contrary to the laws of God, but even deny the very existence of the True God, and dismiss His Word.
The seventh-day Sabbath is a prophetic foreshadowing of the Millennial (1,000 year) Rule of the Kingdom of God by Christ as King, on this earth, ruling the earth with a rod of iron from Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:6 and Revelation 12:5). The seven day week that we observe was established by God in the Book of Genesis, and is a prophetic foreshadow of God's 7,000 year Calendar for all He planned to do. It is laid out so plainly, and it so familiar to us that we don't realize what we are seeing.
As the listing of the Holy Days and Annual Festivals proceeds, the next thing we see is the Passover in Leviticus 23:5, followed by the Days of Unleavened Bread. We have already looked at in a previous Installment, the significance of the Passover, and how it was a prophetic foreshadowing in so many minute details of the death of Christ on the cross.
The Apostle Paul certainly recognized this foreshadowing of the Passover and the Days of Unleavened Bread when he wrote, “Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened. For even Christ our passover is sacrificed for us...” (1 Corinthians 5:7). We will be examining the Days of Unleavened Bread in greater detail later, tonight.
It is so powerful to me when I realize that on the afternoon that Jesus was bleeding out on the cross, the rest of the people in Jerusalem were slaughtering the Passover lambs for that night's observance of that Holy Day. This fact alone should have served as a signal flare alerting us to the significance of both the details and timing of God's Holy Days and Feasts.
As we shall clearly see as we continue, the symbols and the timing of the Passover as foreshadowing Jesus' death is representative of details and timing of the rest of God's Holy Days and Festivals in regard to God's Calendar of Events for our Salvation, and in regarding to the establishment of, first, the Church, and then the Kingdom of God on this earth.
Let's look next at the Days of Unleavened Bread: The Passover was observed at even (or, as the sun was setting) at the end of the fourteenth of Abib, the first month of the Hebrew Calendar. On the very next Day, which occurred after sunset on the fourteenth, began the observance of The Days of Unleavened Bread: In order to observe these days as God prescribed their observance, we read, “And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the LORD: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread” (Leviticus 23:6).
But there was far more involved to the observance than merely eating unleavened bread. The observance is described in greater detail in Exodus 13:7: “Unleavened bread shall be eaten seven days; and there shall no leavened bread be seen with thee, neither shall there be leaven seen with thee in all thy quarters.” Israelites undertook the effort to find and remove from their dwellings any and all traces of leaven. This, too, has a spiritual application to our conversion, and living as Christians.
Leaven, in the New Testament is pictured as a type of sin. Jesus speaks of the symbolic application of leaven in Luke 12:1b:
“... he began to say unto his disciples first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
Albert Barnes tells us of this, “Which is hypocrisy - Hypocrisy is like leaven or yeast, because: 1. It may exist without being immediately detected. Leaven mixed in flour is not known until it produces its effects. 2. It is insinuating. Leaven will soon pervade the whole mass. So hypocrisy will, if undetected and unremoved, soon pervade all our exercises and feelings.
3. It is swelling. It puffs us up, and fills us with pride and vanity. No man is more proud than the hypocrite, and none is more odious to God. When Jesus cautions them to beware of “the leaven of the Pharisees,” he means that they should be cautious about imbibing their spirit and becoming like them. The religion of Jesus is one of sincerity, of humility, of an entire want of disguise. The humblest man is the best Christian, and he who has the least disguise is most like his Master.”
Jesus also spoke about leaven in Matthew 16:6, “Take heed and beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees.”
The Pulpit Commentary says of this verse: “By "leaven" he does not here refer specially to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees and Sadducees, as in Luke 12:1, but to the evil influence which they exercised, which was diffused far and wide, and penetrated to all ranks and classes.
Their unsound opinions, their inability or disinclination to enter into the spiritual sense of Scripture, vitiated their whole system, and made them dangerous teachers directly they attempted to explain or amplify the letter of Holy Writ. It was this same perverse blindness that led them to refuse to accept Jesus as Messiah in spite of all the proofs which had been brought before them.
That leaven, in one aspect, was regarded as a sign of impurity and corruption, we learn from the strict rules which banished it from Divine service, and especially during the Passover season. Says St. Paul, "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump" (Galatians 5:9); and, "Purge out the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, even as ye are unleavened" (1 Corinthians 5:7).”
Before we go on to examine the other major observances of God's appointed Spring Festivals, there is a significant ritual that took place right after the Passover that was also a significant spiritual forecast of Jesus Christ.
Immediately after the Passover, and during the Days of Unleavened Bread, God commanded a ritual to be performed. The Spring Harvest was just about to be reaped. God commanded that the firstfruits of that Harvest be presented as a Thanksgiving Offering. Here is the Command. Pay strict attention to when this was commanded to be done:
“Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: And he shall wave the sheaf before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it” (Leviticus 23:10-11).
On whatever day the Passover fell during the week, and during the Days of Unleavened Bread, on the morrow after the Sabbath, the first sheaf to ripen was offered to God, thanking Him for the Harvest. Jesus' resurrection and His being presented to God as the firstfruits of the Spiritual Harvest, took place in exact correspondence to the commanded ritual: it took place after the Passover, during the Days of Unleavened Bread, and on the morrow after the Sabbath!
From a book called the Feasts of the Lord, we read, “Firstfruits marked the beginning of the cereal grain harvests in Israel. Barley was the first grain to ripen. For Firstfruits, a sheaf of barley was harvested and brought to the Temple as a Thanksgiving Offering to the Lord for the Harvest. It was representative of the barley harvest as a whole, and it served as a pledge, or a guarantee that the remainder of the Harvest would be realized in the days that followed.”
OK... I don't want you to miss this: On the morrow after the sabbath that follows the Passover the priest shall wave it. So following the Passover, on the first day of the week the firstfruit of the Harvest is presented to God. It was the Feast of Firstfruits (Leviticus 23:9-11). And that is exactly when Christ presented Himself to God as the Firstfuit of the Spiritual Harvest.
It was on the first day of the week, after the Sabbath that followed the Passover that Jesus told Mary Magdalene, “Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God, and your God” (John 20:17). Jesus was the firstfruit of the Harvest, or as the Apostle Paul phrased it in 1 Corinthians 15:20: “But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept.”
Can we know for sure that Jesus ascended to His Father presented Himself as the Firstfruit on that first day of the week? Yes! Consider: Jesus told Mary Magdalene on that morrow after the Sabbath, “Touch Me not; for I am not yet ascended to My Father:” (John 20:17). But later, that same day, Jesus actually invited His disciples to touch Him: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Luke 24:39).
Of course, Jesus was not the first person to be raised from the dead. In the New Testament Jesus raised Lazarus and Jairus' the 12 year old daughter; Peter raised Dorcas, and Paul raised Eutychus from the dead. But when each of them came back from the dead, they were raised to a renewed physical life, and they died a second time. Jesus was the firstfruits from the dead, or as Paul phrased it another time in Colossians 1:18, he called Christ “... the firstborn from the dead.”
Unlike the others we named who were raised from the dead, Jesus was raised from the dead, and He is alive forevermore. But there are several other things I want you to see about the Feast of Firstfruits. It is not one of the more familiar Old Testament Feasts, and, as the book, “Feasts of the Lord” says, although it was “not as strongly emphasized in the Hebrew Scriptures as the other Levitical feasts, (it) forms an important backdrop to New Testament teaching.”
“Paul spoke of Epeanatus as 'the firstfruits of Achaia (Romans 16:5),” or the first of the converts from Achaia. “Paul again used this imagery when he spoke of salvation as the 'firstfruits of the Spirit.'” James also applied this Feast to fellow-Christians. “Speaking of believers as set apart to the Lord, James taught (in James 1:18) “Of His own Will He brought us forth by the Word of Truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures.”
And lastly, the Apostle John, much later, in the Book of Revelation “describes a special group of 144,000... who will be sealed just prior to the opening of the seventh seal... John describes these 144,000 as, “redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb” (Revelation 14:4).
As we move forward in the List of Holy Days and Annual Feasts we come to next to Pentecost, also known as the Feast of Weeks; seven weeks are counted after the Feast of Firstfruits. Pentecost is translated from the Greek meaning, count fifty. But count fifty what? Count fifty days? Fifty days in relation to what? Pentecost was celebrated 50 days after that first wavesheaf, the firstfrtuits of the Harvest was offered, making Firstfruits and Pentecost each fall on the first day of the week.
Christianity celebrates Pentecost as the Birthday of the Church. Here again, as with the sacrifice of the Passover, and the putting away and abstaining from leaven during the Days of Unleavened Bread, there is rich spiritual symbolism as Pentecost was a celebration of “The early or Spring Harvest.” The Church, itself, is the early Spiritual Harvest.
Pentecost is the only Feast Day from the Old Testament that is observed on the Christian calendar, but many Christians have no clue regarding its Old Testament roots. Spiritually speaking, this early Harvest refers to the initial gathering of those who are being called into the Church. Fulfilling its Spiritual Harvest symbolism, Pentecost is the Birthday of the Church.
The Expositor's Bible tells us of Pentecost, “THE PENTECOSTAL BLESSING: In these words we find the record of the event which completed the Church, and endowed it with that mysterious power which then was, and ever since has been, the source of its true life and of its highest success.
The time when the gift of the Spirit was vouchsafed is marked for us as "when the day of Pentecost was now come." Here again, as in the fact of the ascension and the waiting of the Church, we trace the outline of Christianity in Judaism, and see in the typical ceremonial of the old dispensation the outline and shadow of heavenly realities.
What was the history of the Pentecostal feast? That feast fulfilled in the Jewish system a twofold place. It was one of the great natural festivals whereby God taught His ancient people to sanctify the different portions of the year. The Passover was the feast of the first ripe corn, celebrating the beginning of the barley harvest, as again the Pentecostal loaves set forth, solemnised, and sanctified the close of the wheat harvest.
No one was permitted, according to the twenty-third of Leviticus, to partake of the fruits of the earth till the harvest had been sanctified by the presentation to God of the first ripe sheaf, just as at the greatest paschal festival ever celebrated, Christ, the first ripe sheaf of that vast harvest of humanity which is maturing for its Lord, was taken out of the grave where the rest of the harvest still lies, and presented in the inner temple of the universe as the first-fruits of humanity unto God.
At Pentecost, on the other hand, it was not a sheaf but a loaf that was offered to signify the completion of the work begun at the Passover. At Pentecost the law is thus laid down: "Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth parts of an ephah: they shall be of fine flour, they shall be baken with leaven, for first-fruits unto the Lord” (Levitcus 23:17).
Pentecost, therefore, was the harvest festival, the feast of ingathering for the Jews; and when the type found its completion in Christ, Pentecost became the feast of ingathering for the nations, when the Church, the mystical body of Christ, was presented unto God to be an instrument of His glory and a blessing to the world at large.
This feast, as we have already intimated, was a fitting season for the gift of the Holy Ghost, and that for another reason. Pentecost was considered by the Jews as a festival commemorative of the giving of the law at Mount Sinai in the third month after they had been delivered from the bondage of Egypt. It was a fitting season, therefore, for the bestowal of the Spirit, whereby the words of ancient prophecy were fulfilled, "I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart I will write it; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people" (Jeremiah 31:33)
Christianity was simply the perfection and completion of Judaism, and was developed therefrom as naturally as the bud of spring bursts forth into the splendid blossom and flower of summer. We trace these evidences of the Divine foreknowledge, as well as of the Divine wisdom, in these Pentecostal revelations, providing for and forecasting future dangers with which, even in its earlier days, the bark of Christ’s Church had desperately to struggle.
I. Now let us take the circumstances of the Pentecostal blessing as they are stated, for every separate detail bears with it an important message. The place and the other circumstances of the outpouring of the Spirit are full of instruction. The first disciples were all with one accord in one place.
There was unity of spirit and unity in open manifestation to the world at large. Christ’s disciples, when they received the gifts of heaven’s choicest blessings, were not split up into dozens of different organisations, each of them hostile to the others, and each striving to aggrandise itself at the expense of kindred brotherhoods.
They had keenly in remembrance the teaching of our Lord’s great Eucharistic supplication when He prayed to His Father for His people that "they may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee that the world may believe that Thou didst send Me" (John 17:21).
There was visible unity among the followers of Christ; there was interior love and charity, finding expression in external union which qualified the disciples for the fuller reception of the spirit of love, and rendered them powerful in doing God’s work amongst men. The state of the Apostles and the blessing then received have an important message for the Christianity of our own and of every age.”
We have thus far only reviewed and examined the Spring Holy Days. There are yet the Fall Holy Days to review and examine. They are The Feast of Trumpets (Rosh Hoshana), the Day Of Atonement (Yom Kippur), the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles (Succoth), and the Last Great Day of the Feast.
God Willing, I will be reviewing and examining the Festivals in the next week or weeks at this same time and place. I invite all of you who are hearing or reading my words to join me in that examination, as well as the unveiling of their deep and significant spiritual applications.
This concludes this evening's Discussion, “Beginning with Moses, Part 8”
This Discussion was presented “live” on September 13th, 2023
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