The Fulfillment of the Feasts of the Lord

Introduction

At the core of the Mosaic Covenant are the seven annual festivals set forth in Leviticus 23, known as the Feasts of the Lord:  Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks (Pentecost), Rosh Hashana (Trumpets), Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and Tabernacles.  The first three are grouped together in the spring, the fourth is in early summer, and the last three are again grouped together in the autumn.  The timing of these holy days is of crucial significance.  The first four festivals commemorated—to the exact day—the major events of the Exodus.  In fact, one of the Hebrew words translated “feast” or “festival” literally means “appointed time.”  The precise day in the Hebrew lunar calendar was appointed to commemorate the Passover event, with the eating of unleavened bread. Then the miraculous deliverance through the Red Sea, which occurred three days later, was celebrated on the feast of Firstfruits.  Fifty days after Firstfruits, the Lord revealed Himself to Moses on Mt. Sinai, and this event is commemorated in the feast of Weeks.

These annual festivals also served a prophetic purpose: They prophesied, again to the exact day, the crucial events by which the Messiah would accomplish the salvation of His people.  Jesus, the Lamb of God—“our Passover Lamb,” as Paul calls Him (1Cor.5:7)—was crucified on Passover.  He was the Unleavened Bread, the sinless Bread of Life, that experienced no decay in the tomb (Acts 2:31).  And at the “appointed time” of Firstfruits, He was resurrected from the dead, as Paul declares:  “But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” (1Cor.15:20) Fifty days after that fulfillment of Firstfruits occurred the feast of Weeks, or Pentecost, described in Acts 2.  Moses’ encounter with the Lord on Mt. Sinai inaugurated the Old Covenant people of God, amid thunder, fire and smoke.  Likewise, at Pentecost, the New Covenant people of God were empowered by the Holy Spirit, and the church inaugurated, with a noise like a mighty wind and with tongues of fire.

The fulfillment of the first four Feasts gives us assurance that the last three, the autumn feasts of Trumpets, Atonement, and Tabernacles, will be fulfilled just as precisely when the Lord Jesus Christ returns, in royal and irresistible power, to judge the life of every human being.

Part I:  The Fulfillment of the Spring Feasts

1.  From Egypt to Sinai

We begin with the historical events comprising the Exodus.  There is little reason to doubt that these are historical events.  The record of them in the books of Moses is by far the most meticulously preserved and carefully detailed of all records from that period.  Ever since archeologists excavated the site of ancient Troy, there are few who doubt that Homer’s account of the Trojan War, though full of poetic invention, is based on an actual war fought about two centuries after the Hebrew Exodus.  Archeology has similarly corroborated the Biblical account, which, though it includes poetry, is mostly a sober historical narrative.  The only serious reason for doubting its substantial authenticity is that it describes numerous divine miracles.  If we accept that the God of the Bible is real, however, that reason for doubt disappears.  The information I am presenting here concerning the Feasts of the Lord furnishes powerful evidence, atop the mountain of other evidence, that God is real and His word is true.  If we had even a fraction of this kind of evidence showing that the Homeric gods were real, we would (or ought to) read the Iliad and the Odyssey rather differently.

We are commonly taught that God told Moses to demand from Pharaoh the release of the Hebrew people from slavery and from Egypt.  That was the ultimate outcome, but it wasn’t the demand.  This is what the Lord told Moses to say:  “The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us.  Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.” (Ex.3:18)  And that is exactly what Moses did say at the outset of his long contest with Pharaoh (Ex.5:1-3).  As the Lord had already made clear to Moses, there was no way Pharaoh was going to give a ready consent; but if he had, the Hebrews would have been morally obliged to return after the three days.  That was, or would have been, the deal.  After the fourth plague Pharaoh did consent to the three-day journey but then immediately reneged (8:25-32).  Prior to the final plague, the death of the firstborn, the Lord told Moses:  “After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely.” (11:1)   So he did (12:31-32), but once again he had second thoughts and went after them with his army (14:5-9).

We know from Ex.12:1-14 that the Passover event occurred on the 14th of Abib (later called Nisan)—that is, the unblemished lambs, having been chosen on the 10th, were slain on the afternoon of the 14th and their blood applied to the doorways.

The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt,
“This month [Abib, later called Nisan, corresponding to March/ April] is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year.  Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.  ...    The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats.  Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the people of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs.


“That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast.  Do not eat the meat raw or cooked in water, but roast it over the fire—head, legs and inner parts.  Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it.  This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD's Passover.


“On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn—both men and animals—and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the LORD.  The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.


“This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD—a lasting ordinance.” (Ex.12:1-14)

That same night the Israelites departed.  They first traveled to Succoth to retrieve the bones of Joseph (13:17-20), then encamped at Etham.  The next day they traveled to Pi Hahiroth, by the Red Sea (14:1-2), and it was on the third day after the Passover that Pharaoh’s army caught up with them.  Throughout the night, the cloud and fire of the Lord held the Egyptians at bay as the Israelites passed through the parted waters, and at daybreak Pharoah and his army were drowned (14:19-31) and God’s people were miraculously delivered.

From the Red Sea they journeyed through the deserts of Marah and Sin, and then:  “In the third month after the Israelites left Egypt—on the very day—they came to the Desert of Sinai.”(Ex.19:1)  The Expositor’s Bible Commentary says that this was in the seventh week following the Exodus.  So on the same day of the week as the Passover, seven weeks later, they arrived at Mt. Sinai.  Next there followed a three-day period to consecrate the people (19:10-11), and thus it was seven weeks after the Red Sea deliverance that Moses ascended the mountain to meet with the Lord and receive His commandments.  Counting both Sundays (the Jews counted both first and last items in a series) that makes fifty days.  I believe there is substantial reason to accept the age-old Jewish teaching that the interval between the feasts of Firstfruits and Weeks commemorates, to the exact day, the journey from the Red Sea to Sinai.

2.  The Appointed Times for the Feasts

In Leviticus 23 (see also Ex.12, Num.28, and Deut.16), the Lord gave His people instruction concerning the Sabbath day and the annual feasts.  It begins:  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them:  “These are My appointed feasts, the appointed feasts of the Lord, which you are to proclaim as sacred assemblies.” (1-2)  “Appointed feasts” here translates the Hebrew word mo’ed, which basically means an appointed and fixed time.  Later the Lord declared expressly, “I choose the appointed time [mo’ed].” (Ps.75:2)  “Assemblies” translates the Hebrew mikrah, meaning a summoned assembly or convocation.  In Scripture, mikrah is almost always preceded by the word qodesh, meaning “holy.”  There were seven of these holy convocations during their religious year, coinciding with the seven Feasts.  Thus mo’ed emphasizes the timing of the Feasts, while mikrah brings out their essential character as sacred assemblies, holy convocations.  A third Hebrew word, chag (noun) or chagag (verb), also meaning “feast” or “keep the feast,” highlights the Feasts as times for rejoicing in the Lord and celebrating His goodness.  Thus the psalmist exults, “When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me:  for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday [chagag].” (Ps.42:4 KJV)  Taken together, these three main Hebrew words for “feast” give us a rounded view of the meaning of the Lord’s Feasts.

Leviticus 23 continues:

These are the Lord’s appointed feasts [mo’ed], the sacred assemblies
          [mikrah] you are to proclaim at their appointed times [mo’ed]:  The
          Lord’s Passover begins at twilight on the fourteenth day of the first
          month.  On the fifteenth day of that month the Lord’s Feast [chag] of
          Unleavened Bread begins; for seven days you must eat bread made
          without yeast.  On the first day hold a sacred assembly [mikrah] and
          do no regular work. (4-7)

The unleavened bread memorializes the hasty urgency of that original Passover night, and it also symbolizes the purging out of sin.

The instruction for the third Feast, Firstfruits, comes next in Leviticus 23:  “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Speak to the Israelites and say to them:  “When you enter the land I am going to give you and you reap its harvest, bring to the priest a sheaf of the first grain you harvest.  He is to wave the sheaf before the Lord so it will be accepted on your behalf; the priest is to wave it on the day after the Sabbath.” (9-11)  The Sabbath here refers to the next weekly Sabbath following Passover (Nisan 14), and not, as the Pharisees later understood it to be, the Nisan 15 mikrah Sabbath which begins the feast of Unleavened Bread.  This is evident from the instructions a few verses later for determining the date of the feast of Weeks:  “From the day after the Sabbath, the day you brought the sheaf of the wave offering, count off seven full weeks.  Count off fifty days up to the day after the seventh Sabbath, and then present an offering of new grain to the Lord.” (15-16)  The interval is seven weeks, and since the feast of Weeks occurs on the day after a weekly Sabbath, the feast of Firstfruits must do likewise. By Biblical reckoning both feasts fall on a Sunday.

By following the Lord’s orders for the original Passover, the Israelites were delivered both from the death of all the firstborn sons and from slavery in Egypt. After their conquest of the Promised Land they began the annual commemorative festivals, and have continued them ever since—even though, during periods of widespread apostasy, only the faithful “remnant” were keeping the Feasts, and even though, ever since the crucifixion of Christ, all the Jews who reject Him as Messiah have been keeping the Feasts in spiritual blindness and ignorance (see Romans 11).

3.  The Appointed Times for the Fulfillment

New Testament Greek has a word, kairos, which is synonymous with the Hebrew mo’ed, “appointed time.” Kairos is used particularly in connection with the Messiah’s mission to save His people from their bondage to sin and death; it emphasizes the sovereignty of God in ordaining and carrying out His plan of salvation.  It was at the appointed time that the Holy Spirit conceived the Son of God in the virgin’s womb:  “But when the time [kairos] had fully come, God sent His son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” (Gal.4:4-5)  At the appointed time, Jesus began His public ministry:  “After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.  ‘The time [kairos] has come,’ He said.  ‘The kingdom of God is near.  Repent and believe the good news!’” (Mark 1:15)  At the appointed time, Jesus laid down His life as a voluntary sacrifice for sin:  “For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave Himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time [kairos].” (1Tim.2:5-6; see also Rom.5:6)  And at the appointed time, the Messiah will come again:  “Therefore judge nothing before the appointed time [kairos]; wait till the Lord comes.” (1Cor.4:5)  In his gospel, John uses hora, the Greek word for “hour,” in much this same sense of an appointed time (see John 2:4, 7:8, 13:1).

As the parable of the fig tree (Matt.24:32-33) indicates, we can discern from the signs of the times when the Lord’s “appointed times” are drawing near, but He has told us definitely that “It is not for you to know the times or dates [kairos] the Father has set by His own authority.” (Acts 1:7)  This means that although Christ’s second coming will fulfill the autumn Feasts as precisely as His first coming has already fulfilled the spring Feasts, we will not be able to pin down the details in advance.  He wants us to be on the watch (see Mark 13:32-37), but still, as always, His ways are going to surprise us.

For many centuries there have been questions and debate about the timing of events during the week of Christ’s crucifixion. The main question has to do with an apparent difference between the first three Gospels and John.  Matthew, Mark and Luke state plainly and repeatedly that the Last Supper was the Passover meal.  That meal, by a law that goes to the heart of the Hebrew religion, had to include a lamb slaughtered in the temple between 3:00 and 5:00 p.m. on Nisan 14, roasted, and eaten that same evening.  The Hebrew word for Passover, pesach, beyond its root meaning of an exempting or “passing over” (see Ex.12:12-14), had come to be used of the Passover lamb itself.  As long as the Israelites were in the land and the temple was still standing—that is, up until 70 A.D.—Passover could not be celebrated without the lamb.  Thus, according to the chronology of these Gospels, Jesus would seem to have been crucified on the day after Passover, that is, on Nisan 15.

According to John, however, during the trial of Jesus, “the Jews led Jesus from Caiaphas to the palace of the Roman governor. By now it was early morning, and to avoid ceremonial uncleanness the Jews did not enter the palace; they wanted to be able to eat the Passover.” (John 18:28)  This seems to indicate that Jesus was crucified on the 14th, on Passover itself, rather than on the 15th.

Can these apparently disagreeing accounts be reconciled?  They can, but there is also another consideration, and a preeminent one.  Jesus died in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy; at the heart of all that prophecy are the feasts of Passover, Unleavened Bread, and Firstfruits.  In the mind of God this is clearly a matter of first importance, since He is the one who ordained the Feasts, with their significant details and exact timing.  He is the one who inspired the writers of Scripture to identify Jesus, repeatedly and positively, as the ultimate Passover lamb, the lamb sacrificed so that those who are “under the blood” will be spared from destruction.  The most profound and explicit of all Old Testament prophecies of the Messiah says that

he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.  He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (Isa.53:5-7)

At the outset of Jesus’ public ministry, John the Baptist identified Him by shouting out, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29)  Peter declares that we have been redeemed “with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.” (1Peter 1:19)  Paul affirms that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” (1Cor.5:7)  In John’s revelatory vision of the heavenly throne room, he says, “Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing in the center of the throne ....”  Then he hears the worshippers singing to the Lamb:  “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” (Rev.5:9)

As the fulfillment of all that the Passover lamb signified, Jesus had to be sacrificed on Nisan 14.  In fulfilling His messianic role, however, it was just as vital that He lead His disciples in celebrating the Passover meal, because He used the main symbolic elements of that meal—specifically the unleavened bread and the wine—to transform the meal into the Lord’s Supper, or Holy Communion, the central rite by which Christians celebrate the New Covenant.  But the Passover meal, of course, has to come after the sacrifice of the lambs, and we are back to the puzzle of the differing Gospel accounts.  Was Jesus crucified on the day after Passover, as the first three Gospels suggest, or was He crucified on Passover itself, as John suggests?  Can both versions be right?

Various solutions to this problem have been proposed. Other commentators, either reluctantly or, if unbelieving, sometimes gleefully, have concluded that there is no solution; the accounts differ, and that is that.  Among the proposed solutions there are two which I believe to be perfectly plausible—and one of them must be right, since the word of God cannot ultimately disagree with itself, and since two paramount truths are at stake:  that Jesus celebrated the Passover meal with His disciples, and that He was sacrificed as “our Passover lamb” on Nisan 14.

Both of the two plausible solutions are based on historical evidence that different ways of reckoning time were in use among the Jews in the first century.  In particular, the two most powerful religious/political parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, differed over the religious calendar.  According to the first solution, the disagreement concerned the day on which the year should begin, with the Pharisees starting it one day earlier.  (Nisan was the first month, and ascertaining the first day involved sighting the new moon.)  In the year of Christ’s crucifixion (either A.D. 30 or 33), the Pharisees placed Nisan 14 on Thursday.  Following this reckoning, Jesus’ disciples sacrificed their lamb in the temple on Thursday afternoon and celebrated Passover with their Lord in the Upper Room that evening (as we are told in Matt.26:17-20, Mark 14:12-16, and Luke 22:7-14).  It was the Sadducees whom John referred to as refusing to enter Pilate’s palace on Friday morning because they wished to avoid defilement and thus be able to eat the Passover that evening (John 18:28); for them, Nisan 14 came on Friday.  This solution to the problem assumes an accommodation between the two parties whereby they agreed to the dual Passover dating; but such an accommodation is likely, given the political power of both parties.

The second solution is similar.  It rests on evidence that the difference in time reckoning, for religious purposes, had to do with whether the day begins at sunset or at sunrise.  There is considerable evidence in the Bible that both ways of marking a day had been used in Israel from the earliest times.  (For further information and documentation on this issue, see Harold W. Hoehner’s excellent study, Chronological Aspects of the Life of Christ.)  Moreover, there is some evidence that both the Pharisees and (regionally) the Galileans counted days from sunrise to sunrise, while the Sadducees and the Judeans counted from sunset to sunset.  Being Galileans, Jesus and His disciples would have regarded Nisan 14 as beginning on Thursday morning and would have sacrificed their lamb that afternoon and had their Passover meal that evening.  For the Sadducees, however, Nisan 14 extended from sunset on Thursday to sunset on Friday, and so they would have sacrificed their lambs on Friday afternoon.  (The same accommodation between the two parties regarding the dual Passover is assumed.)  And since the Sadducees controlled the temple services, the paschal lamb—the one lamb chosen to be sacrificed on behalf of the whole nation—would have been slain at 3:00 p.m. on Friday, the same time at which Jesus died on the cross.

According to either of these two solutions, then, the sequence of events during Holy Week would have been as follows:

1. The instructions for the Passover in Exodus 12 required each family to select an unblemished lamb on Nisan 10 and to take care of it until the 14th, when it was to be slain.  During the time of Christ, on the 10th of Nisan the high priest led a festive procession out of Jerusalem to nearby Bethany, where an unblemished lamb was selected as the Passover sacrifice for the whole nation (each family or group also sacrificed their own lamb or kid).  The priests then led this lamb back into the city along a road lined with thousands waving palm branches and singing Psalm 118:

     The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation.  Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous:  “The LORD's right hand has done mighty things!” . . .
               Open for me the gates of righteousness; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord.  This is the gate of the Lord through which the righteous may enter.  I will give you thanks, for you answered me; you have become my salvation.
          The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.  This is the day the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.  O Lord, save us; O Lord, grant us success.
               Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD. From the house of the LORD we bless you.  The LORD is God, and he has made his light shine upon us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar. (v.14-27)

For the timing of this ceremony the priests would have followed the Sadducean calendar, where Friday was Nisan 14 and the 10th came on Monday.

John’s testimony informs us that Jesus arrived in Bethany “six days before the Passover” and made His triumphal entry on the next day (12:1,12).  John too appears to reflect the Sadducean calendar (he refers to the Jewish officials planning to eat the Passover on Friday), and so six days before Passover, counting inclusively in the Jewish fashion, would be the previous Sunday. Thus it was on Monday that Jesus entered the city; Palm Sunday and Easter are a later development in Christian tradition and are less accurate historically.  On Nisan 10, then, Jesus left Bethany and entered Jerusalem to the acclaim of the same crowds who had just celebrated the entry of the yearling lamb whose role Jesus was appointed to fulfill.  Some acclaimed Him because they had come to believe He was the Messiah, many because they had seen some of His miracles or heard about them, and many others no doubt were just caught up in the excitement of the moment, as Jesus came riding a donkey in fulfillment (as Matt.21:4-5 tells us) of Zech. 9:9:  “Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion! Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you, righteous and having salvation, gentle and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

2. The paschal lamb was tethered for four days on public display in the temple, so that everyone could confirm that it was indeed without blemish.  After driving out the money changers, Jesus spent those same four days in the temple courts healing and teaching, bearing intense public scrutiny and foiling His adversaries’ efforts to discredit Him.

3. The appointed time came for the Messiah to fulfill His chosen destiny.  On Thursday afternoon (Nisan 14 by Pharisaic/Galilean reckoning) He told the disciples, “Go into the city to a certain man and tell him, ‘The Teacher says:  My appointed time [kairos] is near.  I am going to celebrate the Passover with my disciples at your house.’” (Matt.26:18)   Jesus knew the times and seasons; He knew the Feasts most intimately, what they signified, how and exactly when they would be fulfilled.  On that same night, after the Passover meal in the Upper Room, Jesus was arrested, tried, flogged, and sentenced to be crucified.

4. On Friday morning at the third hour (9:00 a.m.), the paschal lamb was bound to the altar.  At the same time (Mark 15:25) Jesus was nailed to the cross outside the city walls.  Then for six hours the lamb and the Lamb approached death.  At noon the sun was shuttered and darkness covered the land (Luke 23:44-45).  At the ninth hour (3:00 p.m.), the high priest ascended the altar, slew the paschal lamb with one swift knife stroke, and pronounced the ritual words “It is finished.”  After uttering the same words (John 19:30) at the same time (Matt.27:46), Jesus gave up His spirit, and “at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.  The earth shook and the rocks split.” (Matt.27:51)  Imagine the scene in the temple:  With a strange darkness fallen outside, the high priest sheds the lamb’s blood, pronouncing the words of fulfillment, and at that moment the earth itself trembles while the great curtain before the Holy of Holies is supernaturally torn asunder.  As all those in attendance gape in awe or terror, the Lord of the temple, the grieving Father, rends His garment and opens the way for His people to enter into His very presence (Heb.10:19-22).


            In eating the Passover meal with His disciples, Jesus identified Himself with their humanity—He was one of them.  In becoming the Passover Lamb Himself, He manifested His deity: He was the real, though unrecognized, object of His people’s worship.  Thus the prophesied Messiah, the holy Son of God, was rejected and scorned by His people and tortured to death at their behest, at the same time that His sacrifice on their behalf was being unwittingly celebrated in the nearby temple.  The extreme irony that played out on that earthshaking day is beyond expression.

Summing up, the timing of Holy Week is as follows: On Nisan 10, Monday, Jesus entered Jerusalem, offering Himself to Israel as their Messiah.  On Thursday evening He ate the Passover meal with His disciples.  On Friday He was crucified and then entombed before the Sabbath began at sunset, as the Gospels tell us.  For three days and nights—Jewish rabbis taught that any part of a day counts as a whole twenty-four-hour day—He lay in the heart of the earth.  And on Sunday morning, the feast of Firstfruits, He was raised from the dead.

Recall now the three-day journey which God told Moses to ask for.  As it turned out, a three-day journey was the final outcome—three days from when they left Egypt to when they crossed the Red Sea.  Recall the reason for the journey:  so that they might offer sacrifices to the Holy One of Israel.  Now we can see why God specified a three-day period for offering sacrifices—because He knew the end from the beginning.  The Lamb of God “was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake.” (1Peter 1:20)  Since the events of Holy Week occurred “by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23), He knew that His Son would be sacrificed at the appointed time—the same time the lambs were slain on the original Passover in Egypt.  He knew that Jesus would be laid in the tomb before the Sabbath began at sunset on Friday.  He knew that the sacrificed Lamb, the Unleavened Bread of Life, would lie dead during the Sabbath (the Hebrew word means “rest”).  And He knew that on the third day, on the feast of Firstfruits, Jesus would be raised from the dead, because that was how He planned it and that was how He did it.

        “I am God, and there is no other;
         I am God, and there is none like me.
I make known the end from the beginning,
From ancient times, what is still to come.
I say:  My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. . . .
What I have said, that will I bring about;
What I have planned, that will I do.” (Isa.46:9-11)

Since the feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread are fixed to days of the month, while Firstfruits is fixed to a day of the week (the first), the interval between Passover and Firstfruits varies from year to year.  The fact that the interval was the same—three days—in the year of the Exodus and the year of the Redeemer is yet more testimony to the sovereignty of God in working out His plan of salvation. The coincidence of Firstfruits with the Red Sea crossing might be considered merely fortuitous if it were not for the evident involvement of a purposeful God.

Part II:  What the Fulfillment Means

Now, let’s review what we are looking at here.  First, we have the historical events comprising the Exodus—that is, the Passover, recounted in Exodus 12, the crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus 14, and the giving of the Ten Commandments in Exodus 19-20.  These are the events by which the Mosaic Covenant was established, and they are commemorated, to the exact day, in the first four Feasts.  And these first four Feasts, again to the exact day, predict the historical events by which the New Covenant was established fifteen centuries later:  the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus, and the coming of the Holy Spirit in power on the feast of Pentecost (Weeks).  The Feasts extend through history like laser beams, aligning the Passover in Egypt with the crucifixion outside Jerusalem, the Red Sea crossing with the resurrection from the tomb, and the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  The Lord’s “appointed times” are kept with amazing precision.

Just as remarkable as the timing of these events is the profound and precise correspondence of their meaning.  Let’s compare them in their appointed sequence.

Passover

The first of the annual feasts, Passover, connects the historical Passover with the crucifixion of Christ.  The Hebrew people, descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, had been enslaved in Egypt for four hundred years.  God sent Moses to be the agent of their deliverance from bondage.  To effect this deliverance, an unblemished yearling lamb had to be chosen (one for each household) and slain, and its blood painted on the doorframe.  That night the Lord would kill all the firstborn sons of Egypt, but “the blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you.”(Ex.12:13)  The correspondence between this Passover and the crucifixion of Christ has long been understood, in part because the New Testament often refers to it.  All of us, in our natural state, are enslaved to sin.  In order to save us from our doomed condition (and it was the only possible way), God sent His own Son to be the agent of our deliverance from bondage.  The “Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29), shed His blood on the cross in order to effect that deliverance.  The spiritual cleansing power of Christ’s blood is applied to our heart when we trust in Him as our Savior.  And thus both the Old and the New Covenant express the universal spiritual truth that the heart of love is sacrifice, that “without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.” (Heb.9:22)  “This is how we know what love is:  Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.  And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers.”(1John 3:16)

Unleavened Bread

The second of the annual feasts, Unleavened Bread, begins on the day after Passover and continues for seven days.  Historically, it connects the unleavened bread that was baked and eaten on that momentous night in Egypt with Jesus, who is the bread of life, whose body, symbolized by unleavened bread, suffered no decay while it lay dead in the tomb.  Bread is of course a staple food in many societies, just as rice, potatoes, and maize are in others.  It is a basic necessity, a source of bodily life.

In the original instructions for the feast of Unleavened Bread, the Israelites were told:  “For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast.  On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel.” (Ex.12:15)  The severity of the punishment—excommunication and banishment, if not death—underlines the seriousness of what yeast usually symbolizes in Scripture and symbolizes here:  sin.  Sin essentially is our antagonism toward God—our contempt for Him, our desire to live independently of Him, our conceit that we are morally superior to Him.  This attitude has to be ruthlessly purged out because it separates us from the only source of life and thus results in death, both physical and spiritual.  When the word of God declares that “the wages of sin is death” (Rom.6:23), it is talking cause and effect.

Jesus was born in Bethlehem, the hometown of His ancestor David; its name means “house of bread.”  He said, “I am the bread of life.  He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. ...  I am the living bread that came down from heaven.  If anyone eats of this bread he will live forever.  This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” (John 6:35, 51)  Jesus Himself, since He is our Creator and Redeemer, is the only source of life there is.  He went on to hammer the point home:  “Jesus said to them, ‘I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.  For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink.  Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him.  Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me.’” (John 6:53-57)

Because this issue is so critical, He brought it to the forefront again at the Last Supper.  Fulfilling the symbolism of the unleavened bread and the cups of wine in the Passover meal, “He took bread, gave thanks and broke it, and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.’  In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.’” (Luke 22:19-20)  We notice an emphasis, which may seem even a morbid emphasis, on eating.  The lamb slain and roasted on that first Passover had to be eaten.  Centuries later the prophet Jeremiah declared, “When your words came, I ate them; they were my joy and my heart’s delight, for I bear your name, O Lord God Almighty.”(Jer.15:16)  And then the Word Himself came in the flesh and told us we must eat and drink Him.  What is this? It isn’t cannibalism, of course, it’s symbolism. But the symbolism of eating the bread and drinking the wine points to a potent spiritual reality.  Between us and God, through Christ, there is a benign mutual assimilation.  Unless we are in Christ by faith (personal trust) and He in us, we cannot share in His rich, pure, joyous everlasting life.  We are left in our unredeemed sin and its consequence, death.  We remain apart.

            Christ’s life for us and in us is pure because He is the unleavened bread.  He was and remains sinless.  He was “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin.”(Heb.4:15)  “Sinless” is a negative term, but its positive counterpart is sheer beauty:  Jesus is full of love, joy, peace, wisdom, goodness, gentleness, generosity, humility, faithfulness, justice and mercy.  Plus, He is King of kings and Lord of lords.  And because He is sinless, His body suffered no corruption while He lay in the tomb (see Acts 2:22-32).  He was as perfect in death as in life.  His perfection shone most gloriously when He was raised from the dead.

Firstfruits

That is what the third feast, the feast of Firstfruits, prefigures.  It commemorates the miraculous passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, and it joins that event, on the calendar and in timeless meaning, with the resurrection of Christ.  On the day of Firstfruits the priest held up a sheaf of the “first fruits” of the spring grain harvest and waved it before the Lord, thanking Him in advance for the whole harvest.  Jesus fulfilled the spiritual promise of the Feast by being the first to be raised into an entirely new order of life.  He spoke of this prophetically when He taught that “a kernel of wheat must be planted in the soil.  Unless it dies, it will be alone—a single seed.  But its death will produce many new kernels—a plentiful harvest of new lives.” (John 12:24 NLT)  And as Paul later affirmed, “Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. ...  But each in his own turn:  Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him.” (1Cor.15:20, 23)  When else should Christ, the firstfuits of the eternal resurrection, be raised except on the feast of Firstfruits?  In being so raised, He inaugurated a radical transformation of human life.  We must understand that the spiritual body in which Christ was raised stands in relation to our mortal bodies in much the same way that those bodies stand in relation to their shadows on the floor and wall (see 1Cor.15:35-57).

The crossing of the Red Sea also prefigures the triumph of Christ over all the ravages of sin and death.  Immediately following the crossing comes the exultant Song of Moses:

Then Moses and the Israelites sang this song to the LORD: “I will sing to the LORD, for he is highly exalted. The horse and its rider he has hurled into the sea.
“The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation. He is my God, and I will praise him, my father’s God, and I will exalt him.
“The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.  Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea.  The deep waters have covered them; they sank to the depths like a stone.
“Your right hand, O LORD, was majestic in power. Your right hand, O LORD, shattered the enemy.  In the greatness of your majesty you threw down those who opposed you. You unleashed your burning anger; it consumed them like stubble.  By the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up. The surging waters stood firm like a wall; the deep waters congealed in the heart of the sea.
“The enemy boasted, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake them. I will divide the spoils; I will gorge myself on them. I will draw my sword and my hand will destroy them.’  But you blew with your breath, and the sea covered them. They sank like lead in the mighty waters.
“Who among the gods is like you, O LORD? Who is like you—majestic in holiness, awesome in glory, working wonders?  You stretched out your right hand and the earth swallowed them.
“In your unfailing love you will lead the people you have redeemed. In your strength you will guide them to your holy dwelling.
“The nations will hear and tremble; anguish will grip the people of Philistia.  The chiefs of Edom will be terrified, the leaders of Moab will be seized with trembling, the people of Canaan will melt away; terror and dread will fall upon them. By the power of your arm they will be as still as a stone—until your people pass by, O LORD, until the people you bought pass by.
“You will bring them in and plant them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place, O LORD, you made for your dwelling, the sanctuary, O Lord, your hands established.  The LORD will reign for ever and ever.” (Ex. 15:1-18)

This is the celebration of a mighty act of God, a miraculous deliverance from certain death, a divine victory over a malign and implacable enemy.  Redeemed by the love and power of their Lord, the Israelites emerged as a reborn nation, free to turn their efforts toward the conquest and occupation of the Promised Land.

Exactly this note of triumph is sounded in the New Testament in reporting and celebrating the resurrection of Christ.  Again and again in the book of Acts the apostles preached the good news: Through the collaboration of human and infernal malice Jesus was tortured to death on the cross, but God, having accepted that perfect sacrifice, has raised Him from the dead.  Jesus has defeated death itself, as Paul exults:

When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”
“Where, O death, is your victory?  Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God!  He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. (1Cor.15:54-57)

From Genesis through Revelation, one of the Bible’s main themes is Satan’s obsession with trying to spoil God’s purpose in creating the human race.  It is questionable whether Satan is so self-deluded that he has ever seriously believed that he, a creature dependent for his ongoing existence on his Creator, can actually thwart the Creator’s plans.  Probably he has lied so incessantly, even to himself, that he has come to believe his lies.  Now, if the Creator were Himself in any way tainted with evil, then Satan’s rebellion, even though doomed to failure, might at least merit respect.  Since God is completely good, however, Satan’s rebellion must be regarded not only as absurd foolishness, in attempting to overcome omnipotence, but also as detestable evil.  Whatever increase of misery awaits Satan and his admirers is appropriate.

  The crucifixion of Christ was the apex of Satan’s schemes, and it was also his supreme delusion.  What he thought was his victory was, precisely, his defeat.  And the Resurrection is the glorious confirmation of Christ’s victory.  As Paul explains at length in 1Corinthians 15, Christ has become the “firstfruits” in the emergence of a new, incorruptible, indestructible life, a new people of God, seen in John’s vision as “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language ....” (Rev.7:9)  The risen Lord, witnessed in person, tangibly, by His closest disciples along with hundreds of others, disproved by no one ever, is our guarantee that we who trust in Him will be together with Him in the great harvest at the end of this age.  That will be the day.

The destruction of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea also foreshadows the New Covenant in the theme of death by drowning.  The Song of Moses emphasizes this theme: “The LORD is a warrior; the LORD is his name.  Pharaoh’s chariots and his army he has hurled into the sea. The best of Pharaoh’s officers are drowned in the Red Sea.  The deep waters have covered them; they sank to the depths like a stone.”( Ex.15:3-4)  Our entrance into the New Covenant in Christ is signalled by the rite of baptism.  The New Testament Greek word baptizo means to submerge or immerse in water.  As Paul explains, the rite of baptism symbolizes the believer’s union with Christ specifically in His death and resurrection:

[D]on’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.  If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. (Rom.6:3-5)

Our baptism into Christ was foreshadowed by the baptism of the Israelites into Moses:  “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers, that our forefathers were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” (1Cor.10:1-2)

What is symbolized in baptism is more than pictorial, it is a real death for the believer, just as it was for Christ.  “I have been crucified with Christ,” Paul states, “and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me ....” (Gal.2:20)  And again, “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.  Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.  For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”(Col.3:1-3)

Just what is this death which the believer dies when he or she is joined with Christ by trusting in Him?  It has been variously explained, but the best understanding is probably that, as a believer, I no longer have a self-life that is independent of Christ.  In that sense, He has become my life, and I have become a participant in the great truth that there is no genuine or complete life apart from Him.  When I sin—that is, when in thought or action I disobey Him—I am simply behaving as though I still had an independent life of my own.  I am being untrue to my truest self, as Paul expresses so dramatically in the second half of Romans 7.  The drowning symbolized in baptism is the drowning of everything in my life that is separate from Christ and alien to Him, everything that is selfish and corrupt and futile.

At the beginning of the Mosaic Covenant, the enemies of God’s people were drowned—defeated—and the people themselves were “baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”  They were consecrated to Moses’ leadership under the sovereignty of God (the cloud). The New Covenant completes, permanently, this attainment of life through death.  Through Christ’s sacrificial death and triumphant resurrection, Satan’s power over believers has been overthrown (Col.2:13-15, Heb.2:14-15, 1John 3:8), and we are delivered from a living death into an everlasting life that is completely worth living.

Pentecost

Compare these two descriptions of what occurred on the same day of the year about fifteen centuries apart:

On the morning of the third day there was thunder and lightning, with a thick cloud over the mountain, and a very loud trumpet blast. Everyone in the camp trembled.  Then Moses led the people out of the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain.
Mount Sinai was covered with smoke, because the LORD descended on it in fire. The smoke billowed up from it like smoke from a furnace, the whole mountain trembled violently, and the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder. Then Moses spoke and the voice of God answered him.  The LORD descended to the top of Mount Sinai and called Moses to the top of the mountain. So Moses went up. (Ex.19:16-20)

When the day of Pentecost came, they were all together in one place.  Suddenly a sound like the blowing of a violent wind came from heaven and filled the whole house where they were sitting.  They saw what seemed to be tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them. (Acts 2:1-4)

The physical similarities here are striking, but what really joins these two events together, beyond their occurring on the same calendar day, is their significance in the history of God’s relations with humanity.  On both occasions, God was sealing a covenant with His people, first the Old Covenant mediated by Moses, and then the New Covenant mediated by Christ.  The Old Covenant, inaugurated by the miraculous deliverance from slavery in Egypt, was sealed by the giving of the Law.  The New Covenant, inaugurated by the death and resurrection of Christ, was sealed by the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the gathered believers.  The Law bound the people of Israel together as the covenant people of God, and the Holy Spirit binds all followers of Jesus together as the body of Christ.  In Old Testament times the feast of Pentecost celebrated the fullness of the annual harvest (as Firstfruits celebrated its beginning), and with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the preaching of the gospel, the New Covenant harvest was in full swing.

In all these ways, God has used the Feasts to tie together His major works in the history of human salvation.  The Feasts join the Old and New Covenants on the calendar and also in their deep, rich significance.  “The LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Ps.118:23)

            Part III:  Should Christians Observe

                     the Feasts of the Lord?

Surprisingly, perhaps, there are good reasons why Christians at the start of the third millenium might choose to observe the Feasts of the Lord.  But one question naturally suggests itself at the outset.  Since we haven’t been keeping the feasts for around nineteen centuries, why should we start keeping them now?  This question, however, immediately raises another:  Are there good reasons why we haven’t been keeping the feasts all these centuries?

There are at least four reasons why we haven’t, and in this section I will examine how good they are.  First, nowhere in the New Testament are believers instructed to continue observing the Levitical feasts.  Second, Paul warned us to avoid legalistic observances.  Third, one influential view of the New Covenant in relation to the Old holds that the feasts have been rendered obsolete for Christians.  And fourth, early in church history, Easter was substituted for the primary Levitical feast of Passover, and the church evolved its own religious calendar.  I will consider in order each of these reasons for not keeping the feasts.

1. The Argument from Silence

In regard to the New Testament’s lack of instructions, the argument from silence cuts both ways.  It might mean that the believers were to discontinue the feasts, or it might be taking for granted (approvingly) that they were still keeping them.  And, in fact, the New Testament isn't entirely silent on the subject.  From Acts 21:17-26 it is clear that most Jewish converts were still keeping Torah—not in order to earn salvation or favor with God, but in order to honor their spiritual roots and maintain the connection with them.  The account in Acts indicates that Paul approved of this.  Also, some years earlier Paul had instructed the Corinthians:  “Get rid of the old yeast that you may be a new batch without yeast—as you really are.  For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.  Therefore let us keep the Festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and wickedness, but with bread without yeast, the bread of sincerity and truth.” (1Cor.5:7-8)  Notice what this exhortation does and does not do.  Paul does not tell them to keep the feast of Passover/ Unleavened Bread but rather how to keep it, the proper spirit in which to keep it.  That they were in fact keeping it is assumed.  It is highly unlikely that “let us keep the Festival” is meant to be taken spiritually and not literally.  To any Jew, and surely to Paul, “keeping the feast” meant doing something very familiar and tangible.  This instruction is thus parallel to the longer teaching in chapter 11 where Paul admonishes the Corinthian believers about the proper manner and spirit in which to observe the Lord’s Supper.  In both cases their problem was not neglect but worldliness.

Significantly, here we find evidence that the largely Gentile church in Corinth was still keeping Passover a quarter century after Christ rose from the dead.

2. Legalistic Observances

The problem that both Jesus and Paul had with the Judaism of their day was that it was a legalistic perversion of the Old Covenant.  We need to keep clearly in mind the difference between law and legalism.  The law, being an expression of God’s loving will for His people, is good in itself and good for us.  We fall into legalism when we attempt to gain God’s favor (to “earn merit”) by keeping the law, by the “works” of the law.  Due to the sinfulness of the human heart, we cannot even come close to keeping God’s moral law perfectly—and perfection, of course, is the law’s demand.  As this impossibility became evident to legalistically inclined Jews under the Old Covenant, rather than seeking the Lord and trusting in His grace, they gradually devised an externalized form of the law, which we find exemplified in the Pharisees of Jesus’ day.  Paul claimed that, as a Pharisee, he had been legally blameless (Php.3:6).  Obviously he doesn’t mean that he had been blameless in regard to God’s law, but rather in regard to the externalized, ritualized code of the scribes and Pharisees.

   In Col.2:13-17, Paul warned his converts about being swayed by the arguments of those “Judaizers” who wanted to make such things as the Sabbath and the Feasts legally binding on all Christians:

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.  And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.
Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day.  These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

The pivotal clause here is “Therefore do not let anyone judge you ….”  Paul is emphasizing our freedom in Christ; in the New Covenant we are “not under law, but under grace.” (Rom.6:14)  God’s promise concerning the New Covenant was that “I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.” (Jer.31:33)  This is the marvelous transforming power of the New Covenant: Through the power of Christ’s blood and the indwelling Holy Spirit, the law of God—His loving, holy direction for our lives—is written on our hearts, so that we can obey Him not out of legal obligation but out of our heart’s desire to please and bless Him.  In the New Covenant, the shadows have become the reality, and that reality is “full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)  Therefore, as regards the Feasts of the Lord, if we become convinced, through Scripture and plain reasoning, that they are indeed God’s “appointed times” for us to celebrate our Messiah’s mighty works of salvation, then we are free to worship Him wholeheartedly in this way.  And if we are not so convinced, we are equally free to worship Him as our conscience leads (see Romans 14).   This is the freedom of the gospel.

3. The Covenant of Salvation

Our view of whether or not Christians ought to observe the Levitical feasts largely depends on our understanding of how the New Covenant is related to the Old.  Unfortunately, in my view, a lot of poor theology on this subject has generated a lot of misunderstanding.  The crux of the matter is whether, according to the Bible, there is continuity or discontinuity between the Old and New Covenants.  For the reasons I will put forward, I believe the relationship is definitely one of continuity.

First, there is the great covenant promise:  “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”  This promise is first made in connection with the covenant with Abraham (Gen.17:7) and is repeated again and again in both testaments (see, for example, Lev.26:12, Jer.7:23, 31:33, Ezek.36:28, Hos.2:23, Zech.8:8, Heb.8:10).  “My people” is singular:  There is one God and one people of God.

Second, the “new” in New Covenant (Jer.31:31) actually means “renewed” or “renovated.”  The same Hebrew word (chadash) was used for the rebuilding of Jerusalem and the temple (2Chron.24:4).  So the New Covenant is the Old Covenant radically renewed, the imperfect made perfect in the Messiah.  The Abrahamic covenant, the Mosaic covenant, the Davidic covenant, and the covenant in Jesus’ blood are all phases in the great covenant of salvation between God and His people.  The covenant with Abraham has never been revoked (Gal.3:17), it has just been enhanced.  The Lord delivered His people out of slavery in Egypt, preparing them to receive His commandments through Moses, because He was mindful of His existing covenant relationship with them (Ex.2:23-25).  The olive tree in Rom.11:16-24 represents the faithful people of God throughout history, from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (the root), to the faithful Jewish remnant (Isa.1:9;10:20-23, Rom.11:1-6), to the believing Gentiles who are grafted in, to the Jews who in future time will believe in their Messiah and be grafted back in.  There is one God and one people of God.

Third, God’s covenant relationship with His people began when Abraham received the promise by faith (Gen.15:6, Rom.4), and it has been sustained by faith ever since.  Moses was a man of faith, and the covenant that he mediated between the Lord and His people was a covenant of faith.  Hebrews 11, of course, is eloquent testimony to this, and it concludes with the affirmation of God’s purpose that the Old Testament saints “should not be made perfect apart from us”—or “only together with us,” as the NIV puts it, ironing out the double negative.  There is one people of God, and they are a people of faith.

Fourth, God’s covenant relationship with His people is and has always been an expression of His grace, empowered by His grace.  John’s statement that “the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17) has been widely misunderstood to mean that God’s law is somehow a bad thing and that the Old Covenant was devoid of grace, if not truth.  It cannot be overemphasized that the law is a good thing.  In truth it is, as David said, more precious than gold and sweeter than honey (Psalm 19:10), and as Paul said, it is “holy, righteous, and good.” (Rom.7:12)  The real culprit is sin, which the law rightly judges and condemns.  Moreover, God’s deliverance of the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt and into the Promised Land is the foremost manifestation of His grace towards His people prior to the incarnation of Christ. The book of Deuteronomy, explaining the significance of the Exodus experience, resonates with eloquent expressions of the Lord’s gracious love and mercy.

The difference between the Old and New Covenants in regard to God’s grace is that prior to the Messiah’s coming, divine grace was mainly manifested in ways external to the human heart.  The Exodus delivered the people politically and formed the nation as a whole, but, except for a chosen remnant whom the Lord sovereignly regenerated, the Israelites still had little inner resistance to idolatry, unbelief, and sin in general.  As Paul explains in Galatians, the law was given as an interim measure, a tutor/governor for a people still in spiritual childhood (3:24).  It was a necessary measure, a discipline provided by a loving Father (Prov.3:11-12, Heb.12:5-11) and a way of showing unequivocally the need for spiritual salvation.  The law itself, however, never could bring salvation and was never intended to.

Inasmuch as God’s grace had been manifested mainly in external ways, it is easy to understand why the Jews were tempted to regard His law as a matter of externals—but still it was wrong, and they had received sufficient revelation to know better.  The first and greatest commandment was to love the Lord with all your heart (Deut.6:5).  The prophets realized this truth and tried to impart it to the nation, but without success.  A much greater work of God was needed, the work described in the Gospels.  Jesus came not to abolish the law but to fulfill it (Matt.5:17).  He was “the telos of the law” (Rom.10:4), where telos means “end, completion, fulfillment.”  He ended the dispensation of law by fulfilling the law in His own person.  Love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom.13:10), and Jesus is full and perfect love.  He kept the moral law perfectly, completely, even to the laying down of His life—His primary covenant purpose—and in so doing He revealed the true spirit of the law, which is the heart of God.  He redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal.3:10-13), and thereby He made the grace of God inward and personal for us.  To be under the law is to bear an insupportable weight, but to have the law written on your heart (Jer.31:33), through the regenerative power of the New Covenant in Christ’s blood, is a miraculous blessing.

Under both the Old and New Covenant, our part is to obey the revealed will of God, and we do so by grace, through faith.  We have greater grace under the New Covenant, thanks to the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.  The messianic events that the Old Testament saints could only look forward to hopefully, we can look back on with full assurance.  By God’s eternal design, the Old Covenant systematically foreshadowed, pointed to, and prepared the way for the New.  And among the main pointers were the Feasts of the Lord.

4. Two Calamitous Rejections

In the early church, quite naturally, there were controversies over which elements of the Old Covenant were permanent, assimilated into the New, and which had been made obsolete.  The council at Jerusalem in Acts 15 is one instance of this ongoing discussion.  Some things, like animal sacrifices in the temple, were soon understood to be obsolete (Heb.10:1-18).  Other things, like circumcision, were a more difficult call, but the Jerusalem council determined that it should not be required for Gentile believers.  And still other things, like the moral law summarized in the Ten Commandments, were clearly still in effect under the New Covenant—even more deeply in effect since the law is now written on the believers’ hearts. With regard to the Feasts of the Lord, inasmuch as God’s people are commanded to observe them “throughout your generations as a permanent ordinance” (Ex.12:17 NAS), their continued observance under the New Covenant seems, in the end, a matter of simple obedience.

As time went on, though, partly as a result of the series of Roman wars against Jewish rebellions, and partly due to theological differences over the divinity of Christ and the nature of the Godhead, the predominantly Gentile church came to identify itself more as separate and distinct from the Old Testament people of God than as their descendants in a continuous covenant relationship with the Holy One of Israel.  The sad historical fact is that the most vicious and persistent persecution of the Jews has come at the hands of predominantly Christian societies.

Behind this shame loom two calamitous rejections.  First, the Jews rejected their Messiah, with the prophesied consequence (Luke 21:20-24) that Jerusalem was besieged and destroyed by the Romans and the survivors sent into slavery and exile.  Second, partly in reaction to the Jews’ rejection of Jesus, during the first few centuries A.D. the Christians increasingly rejected their Old Covenant roots and sank into anti-Semitism.  By the fourth century, when the bishops decided to separate Easter from Passover, a virulent strain of anti-Semitism had taken root in Christian thought—they remembered that the Jewish leaders engineered Christ’s crucifixion and forgot that Christ was a Jew.  The pivotal Council of Nicea in 325 prohibited Jewish believers from circumcising their children (a radical switch from the Council of Jerusalem!) and from observing the Feasts of the Lord. “The Jewish believers were forced to cease being Jewish and to become, in every sense of the word, Gentiles.” (Joseph Good, Rosh Hashana, viii)  Christ tore down the dividing wall of hostility between Jews and Gentiles (Eph.2:14), and the Christians, egged on by the Jews, built it back up.

Thus the church descended into “a specifically Christian branch of anti-Semitism which was superimposed on and blended with the ancient … pagan anti-Semitic tradition to form in time a mighty engine of hatred.” (Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews, 146)  With a few shining exceptions, the subsequent history of Jewry in Europe is mostly a long dreadful litany of discrimination, oppression, ghettoization, expulsion, and massacre. The Holocaust, horrible as it was, was not an anomaly but a culmination.

This long, stiff-necked estrangement between Christians and Jews has produced a major historical irony.  The Jews have kept the Feasts all these centuries without understanding their real significance.  Meanwhile the Christians, who do understand that Jesus is the Messiah, rather than keeping the Lord’s “appointed times” for celebrating the Messiah’s mighty deeds of salvation, have brushed off the Lord’s appointments and substituted a religious calendar derived from paganism—Lent, Easter, Christmas.  Easter was taken over from the old Germanic festival of Eastre, a goddess of spring and fertility who in turn probably derives from Ishtar, the ancient Babylonian goddess of fertility and war.  Christmas is a baptized version of the Roman Saturnalia festival; it was eventually swamped by folklore and is now mainly commercial.  Like the Pharisees, we have “let go of the commands of God and are holding on to the traditions of men.” (Mark 7:8)

A day of reckoning is coming for both Jews and Christians, which I believe will be the fulfillment of the Jewish season of Teshuvah (“return, repentance”).   Beginning on Elul 1 and concluding forty days later on Tishri 10, which is Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), Teshuvah calls us to repent before the Day of the Lord—Judgment Day—comes. When Teshuvah is fulfilled, the judicial blinding of the Jews (Rom.11:7-9, 25) will be lifted, and the Jewish people, individually and en masse, will recognize that the crucified Nazarene is the true Messiah and will repent for having rejected Him.  As Jesus prophesied through Zechariah, “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication.  They will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for him as one grieves for a firstborn son.” (Zech.12:10)

Meanwhile the church, as individual believers and as a whole body, will experience its own Teshuvah.  Broadly speaking, we do not understand real repentance because we have not experienced it.  The church, particularly in America, is immersed in a wealthy, materialistic, self-centered, and in-creasingly pagan society.  Too often we have either gone with the flow and become indistinguishable from them, or else reacted by becoming smugly self-righteous, or even (notably on TV) done both at once.  God calls us to be unified in Christ, but mostly we are fragmented into mutual suspicion, disapproval, competition, and ignorance of one another. The church is alienated from itself almost as much as from its Judaic roots.  But the Lord has a cure for our malady:  Teshuvah, a God-empowered ordeal of repen-tance on a scale and to a depth commensurate with that of the Jews.  As they grieve for having rejected Jesus, so we will grieve for having despised and persecuted them, for cutting ourselves off from our Biblical roots and insulting our gracious Lord.  As one grieves for a firstborn son.


That is how the church will finally reach spiritual maturity. Paul prophesied that Christ would work within His church “until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Eph.4:13)  From where we are at now, it will require the shock therapy of a Teshuvah repentance to achieve that level of maturity.  The result, however, will fulfill the promise of the Day of Atonement and will be an event unparalleled in human history: Jews and Christians reconciled with God and with one another in a massive outpouring of forgiveness and joy.  Paul describes it in these terms (speaking of God’s rejection of the Jews on account of their rejection of Christ):  “For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?” (Rom.11:15) The colossal exultation of this great reconciliation will be like a megaton spiritual explosion sending wave upon wave of powerful witness throughout the world, witness to the truth that Jesus is indeed the Savior of the world.  This will occur during the seven-year Tribulation period, when the Antichrist is consolidating his totalitarian regime and doing everything in his power to defeat the kingdom of God through propaganda and persecution.  Many of God’s people will be martyred (Rev.6:9-11), but our reconciliation will seal the doom of Antichrist.  Those of us who are still alive at that time will overcome him by the blood of the Lamb, by the word of our testimony, and by our willingness to die in upholding the name of Jesus (Rev.12:11).  The Messiah’s second coming, announced with a supernatural trumpet blast (Matt.24:30-31, 1Thess.4:16-17, Rev.19:11-21), will destroy the Antichrist and all his works, and will inaugurate the Messianic reign in fulfillment of the feast of Tabernacles.

Conclusion

The Exodus events—in particular, the Passover, crossing the Red Sea, and the giving of the Law on Mt. Sinai—were “a type and shadow” of their New Covenant fulfillment in Christ. The Lord established the seven Feasts as the way we are to celebrate this connection.  They are the means that God has provided for us and the appointed times that God has provided for us to celebrate His great acts of salvation on our behalf.  How remarkably appropriate it is that Christ, the “firstfruits” of the general resurrection (see 1Cor.15:23), should have been resurrected on the very day—the feast of Firstfruits—that commemorates the miraculous deliverance from death to life when the Red Sea was parted.

As historical markers, the Feasts of the Lord (the first four at least) are utterly unparalleled in that they point both ways, commemoratively back to the Exodus and prophetically forward to Christ—and with a degree of precision over the span of many centuries which could only have been achieved by the hand of God.  The Feasts, rightly understood and faithfully observed, reveal to us both our true roots in salvation history and our true destiny as the people of God.  If we, the people of the New Covenant, were “keeping the feasts” as Paul exhorted us to do, we would be celebrating this inviolable, God-ordained connection between past, present, and future.  We would be celebrating the certainty that God has fulfilled His covenant promises foreshadowed by Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, and Pentecost, and that He will fulfill His covenant promises heralded in the feasts of Trumpets, Yom Kippur, and Tabernacles.