Day 72 - God’s Timing is Perfect

The Hebrew word for feasts is ‘moadim’, which literally means "’appointed times’. The seven Jewish feasts are outlined in Leviticus 23. They were appointed by God and were to be celebrated for all time. They are spread over the seven months of the Jewish calendar and are still celebrated by the Jewish People today. Four of them are celebrated in the spring time. These are Unleavened Bread, Passover, First Fruits and Weeks. The remaining three are celebrated during autumn. They are celebrated within a 15 day period and are named the feast Trumpets, the Day of Atonement and Tabernacles.

We are most familiar with the first four springtime feasts as they coincide with the Christian Easter story. They were not only fulfilled during Jesus’s time on earth but also occurred at the exact times appointed for these four feasts. Lets have a look at the first four:

Feast 1 - Unleavened Bread

This was a preparation for the Passover feast, whereby all yeast was to be removed from every Jewish home. The feast ended with the Passover lamb being sacrificed. This feast may have been Jesus’s motive in throwing out all of the money changers and traders from the temple in order to cleanse His Father’s house.

Feast 2 - Passover

This commemorates the time when the Jewish People were enslaved in Egypt and in an attempt to convince Pharaoh to release them the Angel of Death was to go through the land and the first born in each household would die unless the blood of the blemish free Passover Lamb was daubed on the door post of each house. It is no accident that Jesus was crucified at the time of the Passover. As the blemish free Lamb of God He caused death to ‘pass over’ believers, releasing them from death and slavery to sin.

Feast 3 - First Fruits

This feast celebrated the reaping of the first harvest in the Promised Land. It was celebrated 3 days after the Passover. Israel could not partake of the remainder of the harvest until the first and best of the harvest was offered to God. Jesus rose from the dead at this time as the first fruit of God’s heavenly harvest, opening the way for all other believers to be also ‘harvested’.

Feast 4 – Festival of Weeks – We are more familiar with the name ‘Pentecost’

This occurred seven full weeks after the beginning of the feast of Unleavened Bread. In the Old Testament it celebrating the receiving of the law of the Torah as a symbol of the Old Covenant between God and humankind. We remember Pentecost as the time when the Holy Spirit was first poured out on all believers as a sign of the New Covenant in fulfilment of the prophesy of Joel 2v28: “I will pour out my Spirit on all people”.

The significance of these festivals and their timing are a real sign of how God’s plans have been in place from the beginning. Even when believers may have thought that things were going awry, God was still very much in control.

Look out for the three remaining feasts next week ...

Steve Horton