Introduction.
It has been said that ‘until you have made a study
of the three sevens, you will never know where you are in the
dispensational ways of God’. The three sevens referred to are the
feasts of Jehovah in Leviticus 23, the parables of the kingdom in
Matthew 13 and the addresses to the assemblies in Revelation 2 and
3.
Thus it is disturbing to note how little
ministry is given today on any of these subjects—a fact which goes
some way to explain the general lack of “an outline of sound words”
(2 Tim. 1: 13) among God’s people. Time was when Bible teachers took
up ‘The feasts of the Lord’ on a frequent basis, but now such
ministry is rare. The reasons for this change are many, but the fact
remains that new converts are not getting the start in the study of
the Holy Scriptures that they both deserve and need.
Seven Feasts
There are
seven set feasts of
Jehovah—seven being, in Scripture, the number of completion. Thus if
the addresses to the seven assemblies set out the complete spiritual
history of Christendom, the seven feasts of Jehovah give us the ways
of God with Israel from Christ’s first coming to His second coming
and kingdom. Like most sevens in Scripture, the seven feasts can be
divided into four and three—four feasts which picture events before
the testimony to the risen and glorified Christ was rejected by the
nation and three feasts which speak of Israel’s final restoration.
Now it is true that there are actually eight
feasts in Leviticus 23 and not seven. The sabbath, however, while
linked to the seven other feasts, is clearly set apart from them by
the fact that Moses speaks of it first, before introducing what he
describes in verse 4 as the “set feasts of Jehovah”. Furthermore,
the sabbath was a
weekly feast while the
seven feasts were all
annual—the year being
used to picture the span of the history in view.
The Passover
The first set feast described in Leviticus 23
is the passover (see v5), and is the foundation of all that follows.
The month in which it was inaugurated was to be to Israel “the
beginning of months” (Exod. 12: 2):
God begins with the death of
Christ, and so must we. Each of us must know in our hearts
that “our passover, Christ, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5: 7). How
solemn then that at the
very time of “[the]
preparation of the passover” when Pilate proclaimed “to the Jews,
Behold your king! … they cried out, Take [him] away, take [him]
away, crucify him” (John 19: 14, 15)! The Jews had the feast, but
they would not have the One of whom that feast spoke!
Now the blood of the passover lamb was only
applied to the door–posts once and so “Christ indeed
has once suffered for sins, [the] just for [the] unjust, that he
might bring us to God” (1 Pet. 3: 18). However, though the passover
itself was not repeated, the feast associated with it was to be
celebrated “throughout your generations … for ever” (Exod. 12: 14).
In the same way, neither should we ever forget the One who loved us
and gave Himself for us (see Gal. 2: 20).
No details of the passover are given in
Leviticus 23. The knowledge of the feast is
assumed—without this
knowledge, the reader will not understand anything of what follows.
Thus unless the death of Christ is personally appropriated and
understood there can be no access into the things “which God has
prepared for them that love him” (1 Cor. 2: 9). The Israelite fresh
out of Egypt would see a world of meaning in that simple word
passover. So it should be
with the Christian—and so it should have been with the Jew in the
time of the Lord’s sojourn here.
The Feast of
Unleavened Bread
That there needs to be a spiritual answer on
our part to what God has done at Calvary is seen in the closeness in
timing between the passover and the feast of unleavened bread (which
began a day later—see Lev. 23: 5, 6). Paul also brings the two
together in 1 Cor. 5: “For also our passover, Christ, has been
sacrificed; so that let us celebrate the feast … with unleavened
[bread] of sincerity and truth” (vs. 7, 8). Thus the feast of
unleavened bread speaks of genuine
communion with the “Lord’s
table” (1 Cor. 10: 21)—the fellowship centred on Christ’s death.
Hence “The bread which we break, is it not [the] communion of the
body of the Christ?” (v16).
Twice we read “no manner of servile work shall
ye do” (Lev. 23: 7, 8)—utter devotion was required, there were to be
no distractions in the observation of this “feast …
to Jehovah” (v6, my
emphasis). Furthermore, “on the very first day ye shall put away
leaven out of your houses” (Exod. 12: 15). Leaven speaks of evil—a
holy walk is essential if there is to be communion and conformity
with the Lord’s death. Thus for seven days the children of Israel
were to “eat unleavened bread” (Lev. 23: 6)—they were to be built up
by that which in picture speaks of Christ. You will not find a “holy
convocation” (v8, my emphasis) like this by the Jews in the Gospels.
With them, there was no communion with the mind of God, no moral
answer in their walk to His heart, and no appetite for His
things—the “feasts of Jehovah” (Lev. 23: 4) had truly become the
feasts of the Jews (see John 5: 1; 6: 4; 7: 2). Not only were they
“gathered together” (Luke 22: 66) to destroy Christ, but they were
riddled with the “leaven of malice and wickedness” (1 Cor. 5: 8).
The Feast of
First-fruits
It is not difficult to see from Lev. 23: 9–14
that this feast is particularly about the Lord. We see His perfect
life in the oblation of “two tenths of fine flour mingled with oil,
an offering by fire to Jehovah for a sweet odour” (v13)—a life in
which His Father had immeasurable delight, a life of perfect
evenness and consistency (with none of the roughness and flaws that
mark every other man), and a life lived in the power of the Spirit.
We see also the perfection of His sacrifice in the “he–lamb without
blemish, a yearling, for a burnt–offering to Jehovah” (v12)—the One
given over to death was in every way perfect, a sacrifice with which
God was wholly satisfied. But did all that gave pleasure to God come
to an end on the cross? By no means, for “now Christ is
raised from among
[the] dead, first–fruits of those fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15: 20, my
emphasis)—and that resurrection was typified in the feast by “the
sheaf of the first–fruits of your harvest” (Lev. 23: 10). Offered up
with that sheaf were both the oblation and the burnt offering (all
that was pleasurable to God in Christ’s life and death). How then
could God not raise Him? God’s own
glory
demanded it: “Christ has been raised up from among [the] dead by
the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6: 4). Yet this is not all: if God
has accepted Christ, then that means that I too can be accepted in
Him. Thus the priest was to “wave the sheaf before Jehovah, to be
accepted for you” (Lev. 23: 11).
Furthermore, if Christ is the first–fruits of
resurrection, then there must be others: “but each in his own rank:
[the] first–fruits, Christ; then those that are the Christ’s at his
coming” (1 Cor. 15: 23). What of the Jewish nation then—did they
believe when the testimony to a risen and glorified Lord rang out
and so enter the company of “those that are the Christ’s”? Sadly,
no. Just as the Jew had been found wanting with respect to the two
previous feasts, so he has missed the mark in his response to the
resurrection. The concocted story that the Lord’s disciples stole
His body away is “current among the Jews until this day” (Matt. 28:
15), and Stephen’s testimony to the risen and glorified Christ (see
Acts 7: 56) was rejected for they “hated him, and sent an embassy
after him, saying, We will not that this [man] should reign over us”
(Luke 19: 14).
The Feast of
Weeks
The feast of weeks refers to the fact that it
was held seven
weeks after the feast
of first fruits (or, more exactly, fifty days—hence its Greek name,
pentecost). Now if the feast of first fruits was pre–eminently
about Christ, the feast of weeks focuses on believers. We know this
because the oblation now offered was to be baked with
leaven (see Lev. 23:
17), whereas in the previous oblation there was none. Leaven, as
already noted, speaks of evil, and therefore the oblation in the
feast of weeks is a type of the believer, who, unlike the Lord, has
a sinful nature. Furthermore, we no longer have simply a
sheaf as in the feast of first-fruits, but
loaves (see v17)—the
grains have been made into a whole (speaking of individual believers
brought together in a new company by the Spirit of God—see Acts 2:
1-4). Why then
two loaves? Certainly
together they make up one oblation, but nonetheless a distinction
remains. I would suggest that the two loaves represent Jew and
Gentile together and yet kept distinct in the early Church. This was
quite in accord with the blessing promised to the Gentile in the OT
by virtue of his association with the Jew (Is. 2: 2; 49: 6 etc.),
but it is not really the truth of the one body revealed later
through Paul in which “there is no Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3: 28). In
fact, despite their own Scriptures, the Jew was not even prepared to
accept
any blessing for the Gentiles—in Acts 22 they heard Paul’s
defence
until he recounted how God had said He would send him to the
nations (see v21).
Some think that Lev. 23: 22 refers to the
Gentiles entering into blessing along with Israel in the Church:
“the gleaning of thy harvest shalt thou not gather: thou shalt leave
them unto the poor and to the stranger”. However, Scripture does not
say that the nations will enter into Christian blessings on the
coat–tails of the Jew. This would contradict the truth of the
mystery: “that [they who are of] the nations should be
joint heirs, and a
joint body, and
joint partakers of [his]
promise in Christ Jesus by the glad tidings” (Eph. 3: 6, my
emphasis). No, what is in view in the instruction to leave a
gleaning of the harvest is Gentile blessing
in the kingdom. This should have been no mystery to the Jewish
mind for the OT prophets had foretold it (see Is. 2: 2; Mic. 4: 2;
Zech. 8: 23). Again, when the apostles preached the kingdom in the
Acts (see Acts 8: 12; 20: 25 etc.), it ought to have been no
surprise that God “has to the nations also granted repentance to
life” (Acts 11: 18). However the Gentile being blessed
in conjunction with the Jew is not the same as the Gentile being
blessed on an
equal footing. Thus up until the time that the revelation of the
mystery was made known through Paul, the Church was essentially
Jewish, and the Gentiles, though blessed, were not viewed as equal
partners.
The Feast of
Trumpets
Though the Church was originally wholly Jewish,
and, even after the admission of the Gentiles, remained dominated by
Jewish believers throughout Acts, the situation today is very
different. Now the Church is almost completely Gentile, and Jewish
believers are a tiny minority. Apart from a little remnant (see Rom.
11: 5), Israel rejected the testimony to the risen and glorified
Christ, and so, after much long–suffering, God turned away from them
(see Is. 6: 9–13; Acts 28: 27). Thus “blindness in part is happened
to Israel, until the fulness of the nations be come in” (Rom. 11:
25). Again, “For the children of Israel shall abide many days
without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice” (Hos. 3:
4)—such a state existed only after the sacking of Jerusalem by Titus
in AD70, for before then Israel always had a prince or a sacrifice
and sometimes both. The history of God’s ways with Israel as set out
in the feasts of Jehovah allows for their rejection, as from the
feast of weeks in the third month until the feast of trumpets in the
seven month there was no holy convocation.
Yet though God has cast aside Israel, He says
“For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies
will I gather thee” (Is. 54: 7). Thus on the first day of the
seventh month (the first day signifying a new start for the nation),
the children of Israel were to “have a rest, a memorial of blowing
of trumpets, a holy convocation” (Lev. 23: 24). Some see here a
reference to 1 Thess. 4: 16, 17 and the rapture of the Church, but
the primary subject of the Holy Spirit in the verse is Israel. The
trumpets speak of divine communications (see Num. 10: 1–10).
Furthermore, like the currency of ancient times (see Gen. 23: 16; 1
Pet. 1: 18), the trumpets were made of silver (see Num. 10: 1)—thus
God’s communications to Israel are connected with redemption. How
could He forget forever the people that He has redeemed (see Is. 44:
21, 22)? After the Church has been removed from this scene, God will
begin to awaken and gather his long–scattered earthly people (see
Jer. 23: 3; Ezek. 11: 17; Zech. 10: 6). Thus “ye shall be gathered
one by one, [ye] children of Israel … the great trumpet shall be
blown; and they shall come” (Is. 27: 12, 13). What “a day of blowing
the trumpets shall it be” (Num. 29: 1) for Israel!
The Great Day
of Atonement
The details of the day of atonement, the
scapegoat and the goat of the sin–offering are given in Leviticus
16. The high priest, alone and unseen, sprinkling the blood of the
offered goat on the mercy–seat, (see v17) is a picture of the Lord
Jesus dealing with sin in the three hours of darkness on the cross
(see Matt. 27: 45). When the high priest came out again, it was then
(and then only) that the scapegoat was taken up. Upon its head the
high priest placed the sins of the children of Israel, and sent it
out into the desert never to return (see Lev. 16: 21). Now
the last view that Israel, as a nation, had of the Lord Jesus was on
the cross. In the type, this answers to the high priest going into
the presence of God on the day of atonement.
They have not yet seen Him
come out. However, just as the high priest came out of the
sanctuary having dealt with the question of sins for another year,
so Christ “having been once offered to bear the sins of many, shall
appear to those that look for him the second time without sin for
salvation” (Heb. 9: 28). He will come out of the presence of God,
and Israel “shall see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven
with power and great glory” (Matt. 24: 30). At this juncture, the
command to “afflict your souls” (Lev. 23: 27) in connection with the
feast will take on its full reality as the Jews “look on me whom
they pierced” (Zech. 12: 10). He will answer their repentance by
taking away and never remembering their sins any more (see Rom. 11:
27; Heb. 10: 17)—the wonderful filling out of the type in which the
scapegoat, with the sins of Israel upon its head, was sent out into
a “land of forgetfulness” (Ps. 88: 12). How fitting then is the
place of the day of atonement in the seven feasts of Leviticus 23!
Yes it is the death of Christ that is in view, but it is that death
as bringing about the national repentance of His earthly people.
The Feast of
Booths (or Tabernacles)
The final feast of the series is particularly
associated with
joy: “And ye shall
take on the first day the fruit of beautiful trees, palm branches
and the boughs of leafy trees … and ye shall rejoice before Jehovah
your God seven days … and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast … and thou
shalt be wholly joyful” (Lev. 23: 40; Deut. 16: 14, 15). The feast
of tabernacles thus speaks of millennial joy—that wonderful time
when the promises that God made to Israel will be finally realised
(see. Is. 2: 2–4; 56: 7; Mic. 4: 1). Then “all that are left of all
the nations” shall go up to Jerusalem from “year to year to worship
the King, Jehovah of hosts, and to celebrate the feast of
tabernacles” (Zech. 14: 16). Everything in Scripture is in its right
place—the people must be gathered by the feast of trumpets and pass
through the affliction of the day of atonement before they can reach
that which speaks of the finality of earthly blessing. We see this
very distinctly in John 7 where though “the tabernacles, the feast
of the Jews, was near” (v2), the King would “not walk in Judaea,
because the Jews sought to kill him” (v1). The people might later
take “branches of palms” (John 12: 13) in accord with the feast, but
the time was not right for the kingdom because the hearts of its
subjects were not right either. That is why when the Jew at last
enters into the good of the feast of tabernacles “all born in Israel
shall dwell in booths; that your generations may know that I caused
the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out
of the land of Egypt” (Lev. 23: 42, 43)—they are ever to keep in
mind that the promised land was only reached after much spiritual
exercise in the wilderness.
Conclusion
In verses 37, 38 we are told that “these are
the set feasts of Jehovah …
besides the sabbaths of Jehovah” (my emphasis). Why then is the
Sabbath mentioned at all? Because it sets out the great end in view
of the seven set feasts—the eternal rest of God. At the present
moment God is working (see John 5: 17), but there is coming a day
when all things shall have been brought into subjection to God …
“that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15: 28). This is not the
millennial reign of Christ, but the eternal state. Thus “there
remains then” to come “a sabbatism to the people of God” (Heb. 4:
9)—not just for Christians, but for
Israel.
