Sunday, April 5, 2009

Leviticus 23 - The Fall Festivals


The Festival of Trumpets or New Year (Rosh Hashanah). Observed the 1st of Tishri (September or October).

September 19 in 2009 (starting at sundown the night before).


(23) The Lord said to Moses,


(24) “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. On the first day of the appointed month in early autumn, you are to observe a day of complete rest. It will be an official day for holy assembly, a day commemorated with loud blasts of a trumpet.


(25) You must do no ordinary work on that day. Instead, you are to present special gifts to the Lord.”



Exodus 19:16-19: On the morning of the third day, thunder roared and lightning flashed, and a dense cloud came down on the mountain. There was a long, loud blast from a ram’s horn, and all the people trembled. Moses led them out from the camp to meet with God, and they stood at the foot of the mountain. All of Mount Sinai was covered with smoke because the Lord had descended on it in the form of fire. The smoke billowed into the sky like smoke from a brick kiln, and the whole mountain shook violently. As the blast of the ram’s horn grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God thundered his reply.


Numbers 29:1-6: “Celebrate the Festival of Trumpets each year on the first day of the appointed month in early autumn. You must call an official day for holy assembly, and you may do no ordinary work. On that day you must present a burnt offering as a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It will consist of one young bull, one ram, and seven one-year-old male lambs, all with no defects. These must be accompanied by grain offerings of choice flour moistened with olive oil—six quarts with the bull, four quarts with the ram, and two quarts with each of the seven lambs. In addition, you must sacrifice a male goat as a sin offering to purify yourselves and make yourselves right with the Lord. These special sacrifices are in addition to your regular monthly and daily burnt offerings, and they must be given with their prescribed grain offerings and liquid offerings. These offerings are given as a special gift to the Lord, a pleasing aroma to him.


   The Ten Days of Repentance that follow it and Yom Kippur make up the High Holy Days. Jewish tradition says that God writes every person's words, deeds and thoughts in the Book of Life, which he opens and examines on this day. if good deeds outnumber sinful ones for the year, that person's name will be inscribed in the book for another year on Yom Kippur. So, during Rosh HaShanah and the Ten Days of Repent ace, people can repent of their sins and do good deeds to increase their chances of being inscribed in the Book of Life. God does have a book of life; Revelation 21:27 calls it the "Lamb's book of life." The only way to have one's name inscribed in it is through faith in Jesus as Savior from sin, and then it is permanent (John 10:27-30). Prior to Rosh HaShanah, the shofar (ram's horn) is blown to call people to repent and remind them that the holy days are arriving. During the Rosh Hashanah synagogue services, the shofar is blown 100 times. Rosh HaShanah is sometimes referred to as the Day of Judgment.


   Some people believe the four spring holidays (Passover, Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits and Feast of Weeks) were fulfilled in Messiah's first coming and that the three autumn holidays (Feast of Trumpets, Day of Atonement and Feast of Booths) will be fulfilled at His second coming.


   The next feast is the Feast of Trumpets which, as we will see, is yet to be fulfilled.


   The central manifestation of this feast was blasts of trumpets. What does that mean? Once again we are not left to guess.


   If you turn to Matthew 24, Jesus is describing how this age will end. There will be the rise of the antichrist, the division of the nations into warring camps, and great tribulation will spread abroad on earth, a time of terrible trouble. In Verses 29-31 he says,


   "Immediately after the tribulation of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken; then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then all the tribes of the earth [the tribes of Israel] will mourn, and they will see the Son of man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory; and he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." {Matt 24:29-31 RSV}


   That is the next event in God's program with his people Israel. The Son of man will come, and the trumpet of God will herald the final gathering of Israel to the land. Much as we are interested in what is happening in Palestine now, the return of the Jews to their land, nevertheless this is not the final gathering. There is going to be another Dispersion, strangely enough. It will not last long, but Zechariah describes in detail how the city of Jerusalem shall again be taken captive and the people driven from it. It is only after they see returning the One whom they once rejected that they will be called back by the angels of God in the Feast of Trumpets, never to leave again, and God will take up his work with Israel once again.


Quoted from God's Calendar: www.pbc.org/library/files/html/0520.htm



   The Feast of Trumpets, which was observed on the first day of the Seventh month, ushered in the second series of the "set feasts." It fell on a Sabbath day, at the time of the New Moon, and ushered in the Jewish New Year. It was followed by the "Day of Atonement" on the 10th day of the month, and by the "Feast of Tabernacles" which began on the 15th day of the month, a Sabbath day, and ended on the 22d day of the month, which was also a Sabbath day. It was ushered in with the blowing of Trumpets. During the Wilderness Wandering two silver Trumpets, made of the atonement money of the people, were blown for the "calling of the Assembly," and for the "journeyings of the Camps." Numbers 10:1-10.


   The fact that the Feast of Trumpets comes immediately at the close of the "Interval" between the two series of "set feasts" is not without significance. As we have seen the "Interval" represents this "Dispensation of Grace," and we know that two things are to happen at the close of this Dispensation. First the Church is to be caught out, and secondly Israel is to be gathered back to their own land. When the Church is caught out - "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet call of God." (1 Thessalonians 4:16), and "But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed." (1 Corinthians 15:51-52).


   This "last trump" is not the last of the "Seven Trumpets" that sound in the Book of Revelation, for it does not sound until the "Middle of the Week," while the Church is caught out "before" the beginning of the "Week." We probably are to understand by the "last trump" the last of the Two Trumpets used by Israel, the first, for the "calling of the Assembly," will call out the dead in Christ from their graves, and the second or "last," for the "journeying of the camps," will be the signal for the upward journey of the risen and transformed saints to meet the Lord in the air.


   Then we read in Matthew 24:31, that the Son of Man, when He comes in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory at His Revelation of Himself, shall send His angels with a great sound of a Trumpet, and they shall gather together His "elect" (not of the Church but of Israel) from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other." From this we see that the "Feast of Trumpets" has a typical relation to the "catching out" of the Church, and the regathering of Israel at the Second Coming of Christ. This has led some to believe that as Jesus was crucified at the time of the Passover, and the Holy Spirit was given at Pentecost, that when He comes back the "Rapture" will take place at the Feast of Tabernacles, and the "Revelation" seven years later at the time of the same Feast. Time alone will reveal the correctness of this view.




The Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur pronounced Yome Ki-POOR). Celebrated the 10th of Tishri (September or October).

September 28 in 2009 (starting at sundown the night before).


(26) Then the Lord said to Moses,


(27) “Be careful to celebrate the Day of Atonement on the tenth day of that same month—nine days after the Festival of Trumpets. You must observe it as an official day for holy assembly, a day to deny yourselves and present special gifts to the Lord.


Hebrew on the tenth day of the seventh month.


(28) Do no work during that entire day because it is the Day of Atonement, when offerings of purification are made for you, making you right with the Lord your God.


(29) All who do not deny themselves that day will be cut off from God’s people.


(30) And I will destroy anyone among you who does any work on that day.


(31) You must not do any work at all! This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed from generation to generation wherever you live.


(32) This will be a Sabbath day of complete rest for you, and on that day you must deny yourselves. This day of rest will begin at sundown on the ninth day of the month and extend until sundown on the tenth day.”



   We already did a study on Yom Kippur, which can be found at http://leviticus-the-law.blogspot.com/2009/03/leviticus-16-yom-kippur.html.


   Certain offerings were to be given in connection with this which are described in detail in Chapter 16. But the distinctive thing about this day is that it is to be a time of self judgment, of affliction of spirit, a time of looking at yourself and seeing the wasted years of your life, and of mourning, regretting those wasted opportunities. For Israel this is described in detail in Zechariah 12:


Zechariah 12:10-11: Then I will pour out a spirit of grace and prayer on the family of David and on the people of Jerusalem. They will look on me whom they have pierced and mourn for him as for an only son. They will grieve bitterly for him as for a firstborn son who has died. The sorrow and mourning in Jerusalem on that day will be like the great mourning for Hadad-rimmon in the valley of Megiddo.


   That is when Israel shall regret their long centuries of unbelief. For the Christian this time of mourning, this review of the wasted eras of life, comes at the judgment seat of Christ, when we "receive the things done in the body, whether they be good or bad" {cf, 2 Corinthians 5:10}, and we learn how much of our life was spent in the flesh, following after the leaven, and how much of it was spent in the Spirit, rejoicing in the work of Another on our behalf, depending upon him to produce gold, silver, and precious stones in our life.


from God's Calendar: www.pbc.org/library/files/html/0520.htm


   The Jubilee (Hebrew Yobel) year, is the year at the end of seven cycles of Sabbatical years and had a special impact on the ownership and management of land. The Hebrew term yobel derives from yobhel, meaning ram. The Jubilee year was announced by a blast on an instrument made from a ram's horn, during that year's Yom Kippur. The biblical requirement is that the Jubilee year was to be treated like a Sabbatical year, with the land lying fallow, but also required the compulsory return of all property to its original owners or their heirs, except the houses of laymen within walled cities, in addition to the freedom of all Israelite indentured servants.




The Festival of Shelters or Booths (Sukkot or Succoth pronounced Soo-kote).

This was earlier called the Festival of the Final Harvest or Festival of Ingathering (see Exodus 23:16b).

October 3 in 2009 (starting at sundown the night before).


(33) And the Lord said to Moses,


(34) “Give the following instructions to the people of Israel. Begin celebrating the Festival of Shelters on the fifteenth day of the appointed month—five days after the Day of Atonement. This festival to the Lord will last for seven days.


Hebrew on the fifteenth day of the seventh month


(35) On the first day of the festival you must proclaim an official day for holy assembly, when you do no ordinary work.


(36) For seven days you must present special gifts to the Lord. The eighth day is another holy day on which you present your special gifts to the Lord. This will be a solemn occasion, and no ordinary work may be done that day.


(37) (“These are the Lord’s appointed festivals. Celebrate them each year as official days for holy assembly by presenting special gifts to the Lord—burnt offerings, grain offerings, sacrifices, and liquid offerings—each on its proper day.


(38) These festivals must be observed in addition to the Lord’s regular Sabbath days, and the offerings are in addition to your personal gifts, the offerings you give to fulfill your vows, and the voluntary offerings you present to the Lord.)


(39) “Remember that this seven-day festival to the Lord—the Festival of Shelters—begins on the fifteenth day of the appointed month, after you have harvested all the produce of the land. The first day and the eighth day of the festival will be days of complete rest.


(40) On the first day gather branches from magnificent trees—palm fronds, boughs from leafy trees, and willows that grow by the streams. Then celebrate with joy before the Lord your God for seven days.


WAVING OF THE LULAV


These are the four species that form the lulav and etrog. The four species are waved in the synagogue as part of the service during the holiday of Sukkot. The four are lumped together under the inclusive term lulav, since the lulav is the largest and most prominent. The branches and fruit are waved each day Sukkot, except on Shabbat. When the Temple stood in Jerusalem, the Jewish people used lulav and etrog on the first day. Only the Kohanim who served in the Temple used the lulav and etrog for the rest of the holiday. Once the Temple was destroyed, the rabbis decreed that all Jews should wave the lulav and etrog all seven days as a remembrance of Temple days.


(41) You must observe this festival to the Lord for seven days every year. This is a permanent law for you, and it must be observed in the appointed month from generation to generation.


(42) For seven days you must live outside in little shelters. All native-born Israelites must live in shelters.


(43) This will remind each new generation of Israelites that I made their ancestors live in shelters when I rescued them from the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”


Exodus 23:16: “Second, celebrate the Festival of Harvest, when you bring me the first crops of your harvest. “Finally, celebrate the Festival of the Final Harvest at the end of the harvest season, when you have harvested all the crops from your fields.


Deuteronomy 16:13-17: “You must observe the Festival of Shelters for seven days at the end of the harvest season, after the grain has been threshed and the grapes have been pressed. This festival will be a happy time of celebrating with your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levites, foreigners, orphans, and widows from your towns. For seven days you must celebrate this festival to honor the Lord your God at the place he chooses, for it is he who blesses you with bountiful harvests and gives you success in all your work. This festival will be a time of great joy for all. “Each year every man in Israel must celebrate these three festivals: the Festival of Unleavened Bread, the Festival of Harvest, and the Festival of Shelters. On each of these occasions, all men must appear before the Lord your God at the place he chooses, but they must not appear before the Lord without a gift for him. All must give as they are able, according to the blessings given to them by the Lord your God.


Zechariah 14: Watch, for the day of the Lord is coming when your possessions will be plundered right in front of you! I will gather all the nations to fight against Jerusalem. The city will be taken, the houses looted, and the women raped. Half the population will be taken into captivity, and the rest will be left among the ruins of the city. Then the Lord will go out to fight against those nations, as he has fought in times past. On that day his feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, east of Jerusalem. And the Mount of Olives will split apart, making a wide valley running from east to west. Half the mountain will move toward the north and half toward the south. You will flee through this valley, for it will reach across to Azal. Yes, you will flee as you did from the earthquake in the days of King Uzziah of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come, and all his holy ones with him. On that day the sources of light will no longer shine, yet there will be continuous day! Only the Lord knows how this could happen. There will be no normal day and night, for at evening time it will still be light. On that day life-giving waters will flow out from Jerusalem, half toward the Dead Sea and half toward the Mediterranean, flowing continuously in both summer and winter. And the Lord will be king over all the earth. On that day there will be one Lord—his name alone will be worshiped. All the land from Geba, north of Judah, to Rimmon, south of Jerusalem, will become one vast plain. But Jerusalem will be raised up in its original place and will be inhabited all the way from the Benjamin Gate over to the site of the old gate, then to the Corner Gate, and from the Tower of Hananel to the king’s winepresses. And Jerusalem will be filled, safe at last, never again to be cursed and destroyed. And the Lord will send a plague on all the nations that fought against Jerusalem. Their people will become like walking corpses, their flesh rotting away. Their eyes will rot in their sockets, and their tongues will rot in their mouths. On that day they will be terrified, stricken by the Lord with great panic. They will fight their neighbors hand to hand. Judah, too, will be fighting at Jerusalem. The wealth of all the neighboring nations will be captured—great quantities of gold and silver and fine clothing. This same plague will strike the horses, mules, camels, donkeys, and all the other animals in the enemy camps. In the end, the enemies of Jerusalem who survive the plague will go up to Jerusalem each year to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, and to celebrate the Festival of Shelters. Any nation in the world that refuses to come to Jerusalem to worship the King, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, will have no rain. If the people of Egypt refuse to attend the festival, the Lord will punish them with the same plague that he sends on the other nations who refuse to go. Egypt and the other nations will all be punished if they don’t go to celebrate the Festival of Shelters. On that day even the harness bells of the horses will be inscribed with these words: Holy to the Lord. And the cooking pots in the Temple of the Lord will be as sacred as the basins used beside the altar. In fact, every cooking pot in Jerusalem and Judah will be holy to the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. All who come to worship will be free to use any of these pots to boil their sacrifices. And on that day there will no longer be traders in the Temple of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.



   And then, finally, comes the last of the feasts, the Feast of Tabernacles, or booths.


   That is a beautiful picture of what is frequently called the millennium, the time which follows Israel's restoration to their LORD and God, when they return to a relationship to nature with the curse removed and God beautifully blesses the earth and the desert shall blossom like the rose. The secret of peace will be found and nations shall not make war any more, and rejoicing will be the whole experience of men on the earth. The secret of all that, as Paul tells us in Romans 11, is the nation Israel. They are still in the long hot summer right now, before the Feast of Trumpets restores them.


   But, as we have seen all along in this book of Leviticus, all of this is now being fulfilled in the spiritual program of each believer in Jesus Christ. God is at work in your life to bring you along this pathway, just as he outlines it here, so that you shall discover and come at last to the place of joy. C.S. Lewis says, "The ultimate purpose of God in all his work is to increase joy." And this Feast of Tabernacles is a beautiful picture of the radiant joy which is always the final product of God at work in a human life.


   God's process with each of us leads from wrath and judgment and fear to the place where we rest at last in the blood of the passover lamb, Jesus Christ, shed on our behalf. It goes on through gradual separation from evil, with much tears and fainting, and yet in the power of a new life imparted by the Holy Spirit. It progresses to the healing of broken relationships and the gathering of believers together into one body, the breaking down of middle walls of partition between us. It moves on through the restoration of the wasted years of our life unto, finally, the experience of radiant, unrestrained joy in what God himself is. That is God's program.


from God's Calendar: www.pbc.org/library/files/html/0520.htm


Revelation 21:3: And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. (KJV)


(44) So Moses gave the Israelites these instructions regarding the annual festivals of the Lord.


   While the Feast of Tabernacles began on the Sabbath and continued seven days, it was to be followed by a Sabbath. Leviticus 23:39. This Sabbath on the "Eighth Day" points to the New Heaven and Earth that follow the Millennium, and to the "Eighth Dispensation," the Dispensation of the "Fullness of Times"."



   Eventually, these festivals just became meaningless rituals to the Jews. Jesus called them the "Feasts of the Jews" instead of the "Feasts of the Lord." Here's how God felt about it:


Isaiah 1:13-14: Stop bringing me your meaningless gifts; the incense of your offerings disgusts me! As for your celebrations of the new moon and the Sabbath and your special days for fasting - they are all sinful and false. I want no more of your pious meetings. I hate your new moon celebrations and your annual festivals. They are a burden to me. I cannot stand them!



   The NIV Study Bible has a chart summarizing the Old Testament Festivals and Other Sacred Days, which is paraphrased below with just Name & Purpose (From Zondervan's "NIV Study Bible” pp. 176-177):



  1. Sabbath - Rest for people and animals.


  2. Sabbath Year - Rest for land.

  3. Year of Jubilee - Help for poor; stabilize society.

  4. Passover - Remember Israel's deliverance from Egypt.

  5. Unleavened Bread - Remember how the Lord brought the Israelites out of Egypt in haste.

  6. Firstfruits - Recognize the Lord's bounty in the land.

  7. Weeks (Pentecost or Harvest) - Show joy and thankfulness for the Lord's blessing of harvest.

  8. Trumpets (Rosh Hashanah-New Year's Day) - Present Israel before the Lord for his favor

  9. Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) - Atone for the sins of priests and people and purify the Holy Place.

  10. Tabernacles (Booths or Ingathering) - Memorialize the journey from Egypt to Canaan; give thanks for the productivity of Canaan.

  11. Sacred Assembly - Commemorate the closing of the cycle of feasts.

  12. Purim - Remind the Israelites of their national deliverance in the time of Esther.

  13. Hanukkah (Feast of Dedication or Festival of Lights) - Commemorated the purification of the temple and altar in the Maccabean period

  14. New moons were also often special feast days.



Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the New Living Translation of the Bible.



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