Part XX3.1 - Feasts of the Lord

CHAPTER XXIII. THE FEASTS OF THE LORD. THIS chapter is addressed to the children of Israel, "concerning the feasts of the Lord " which were to be proclaimed as " holy convocations." The feasts are seven in number as follows:- I. " The Sabbath" every seventh day.

II. " The passover," on the fourteenth day of the first month at even.

III. The feast of " Unleavened Bread," on the fifteenth day of the same month, and continuing seven days.

IV. The feast of the " First-fruits," at the commencement of harvest, on the morrow after the Sabbath.

V. The "Blowing of trumpets," on the first day of the seventh month.

VI. The " Day of Atonement," on the tenth day of the seventh month.

VII. The Feast of " Tabernacles," on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and continuing seven days. Three of these feasts are distinguished by the required attendance of all the "men children " to appear before the Lord God, the God of Israel." "Three times in a year shall all thy males appear before the Lord thy God, in the place which He shall choose ; in the feast of unleavened bread, and in the feast of weeks, and in the feast of tabernacles; and they shall not appear before the Lord empty: every man shall give as he is able, according to the blessing of the Lord thy God, which He hath given thee." Deuteronomy 16:16. See also Exodus 23:14; Exodus 34:23. The general characteristic of these feasts is that they are "feasts of the Lord," "holy convocations." But in feasts continued during several days, the first, seventh, and eighth days, are specially distinguished as " holy convocations," in which "no servile work is to be done." In each of these appointed seasons the people were to be occupied in matters which separated them from their common avocations, and which referred directly to the Lord. All is to be done "unto the Lord," or, "before the Lord," whether it be presenting offerings, ceasing from servile work, or from work absolutely, or afflicting their souls. Frequent reference is made to these feasts in other parts of Scripture, and many further particulars are mentioned. In this chapter the immediate object seems to be to give their order, and to present them in their right place in the course of instruction given in the book, which is a practical code of guidance for the holy people of the Lord, to enable them to keep the Lord prominently before them, and to make the symbols of His grace understood by those who had " a heart to perceive, eyes to see, and ears to hear " (Deuteronomy 24:4). As connected with the course of time, the full revolution of the year divided into its due portions, we may expect to find in these feasts symbolic indices of God’s dealings in their historical order. Perhaps, indeed, the whole revolution of time, in its dispensational course, is included. T. The Sabbath is the first mentioned of the feasts, and comes under the general heading of all as " holy convocations." This is a constantly recurring feast spread over the whole of the year, a weekly memorial. But with respect to the others there is a direction that they shall be proclaimed " in their seasons." The alternation of six days’ labour and a holy rest unto the Lord on the seventh day characterized the whole revolving period, irrespective of other appointments for days of rest, restraint, fcc., though some of these might fall upon the Sabbath, in which case the day would be characterized by the more special annual solemnity. But though a holy convocation, the Sabbath did not bring the whole congregation together, but was to be observed " in all their dwellings." And it was a positive rest, ’ ye shall do no work " (See Exodus 20:1-26; Deuteronomy 5:1-33.): this is the special point enforced. ’ It was a memorial of God’s rest from His works in creation (Genesis 2:3; Exodus 20:11). " And remember that thou wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God brought thee out thence through a mighty hand and by a stretched out arm: therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the Sabbath day " (Deuteronomy 5:15). " Verily my Sabbaths ye shall keep: for it is a sign between Me and you throughout your generations ; that ye may know that I am the Lord That doth sanctify you " (Exodus 31:13; Ezekiel 20:12). " And hallow My Sabbaths; and they shall be a sign between Me and you, that ye may know that I am the Lord your God " (Ezekiel 20:20). In the wilderness a double portion of manna was sent as a provision for the Sabbath (Exodus 16:22). This is the first mention of it subsequently to the notice of its sanctification when the works of creation were finished. The shewbread was to be set in order before the Lord every Sabbath continually (Leviticus 24:8; 1 Chronicles 9:32). A continual burnt offering of two lambs, with their meat and drink offerings, was appointed for the Sabbath (Numbers 28:9).

It was to be esteemed "a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable" (Isaiah 58:13). In the new heavens and earth it is an appointed period for all flesh to come to worship (Isaiah 66:23). And when Messiah shall have built the Millennial temple, it is an appointed time for the east gate, by which the prince enters, to be opened (Ezekiel 46:1). In the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn towards the first day, the women came to the sepulchre of the Lord (Matthew 28:1). In Isaiah 1:13, the Lord says of the Sabbaths that He cannot away with them; for the people had forsaken Him (Isaiah 1:4). But the keeping of the Sabbath is subsequently commanded.

Generally, blessings are promised to observance and judgment is a consequence of disregarding it (Jeremiah 17:21; Nehemiah 13:15). The Lord Jesus, in the course of His ministry, evidently sets aside this Sabbath, and presents Himself as the Son of man, the Lord of the Sabbath, with the statement, "My Father worketh hitherto and I work." But He Himself is the Sabbath, the substance of which the day was the shadow (Colossians 2:16-17). In Hebrews 4:1-16 :the whole question is taken up, showing that the institution of the seventh day pointed forward to the real Sabbath. We that believe do enter into rest; but the Sabbath yet remains. And so it was that the sabbaths of days expanding into sabbaths of weeks and months and years, and thenceforward into sabbaths of sabbaths, led the eye of faith to look onward to the true Sabbath of God. All tended to show that God was yet working, though the works first spoken of were finished. But "he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from His.

Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest." This is a key for the Church to the true moral force of the repeated injunctions in the Old Testament as to the Sabbath. They call upon us to cease from the works of the old creation and to labour in those of the new. " If any man be in Christ he is a new creature " (KCUV)I KTiW). And thus the injunctions for the observance of this ever recurring feast throughout the whole course of time comes in its force to us who ought to have rest in believing, that is, in seeing God’s rest, and in labouring to enter into it. And this labour is a struggling against " disobedience" (Hebrews 4:11, marg., which is the correct rendering of dwddfias’). All the scriptures quoted above will concur in this. But there is no Sabbath where God is forgotten. Sabbaths are afterwards mentioned which are connected with special times and circumstances in the course of the feasts, both seventh, eighth, and first days: but this is the seventh day rest, and to be ever observed throughout the whole year. The eighth day and the first day are manifestation, but both are now, as the seventh, true to faith; and so all are named. For faith takes hold of God, and He has revealed His purpose, the mystery hidden from ages and generations. But it must also be known, in all that relates to this point, that " the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath." God provides a rest for man. And Jesus, the Son of man, is Lord of the Sabbath, and presents Himself as the rest of the weary (Matthew 11:28). And in this instance we discern the two points of entering and labouring to enter; for both are accomplished by learning of Him. Much of the Lord’s works of love and grace was done on the Sabbath day, and the result of them will be seen on the Lord’s day. And so in the knowledge of rest we are to be labouring, and meanwhile looking for the dawning towards the first day of the week. "For the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works."

Leviticus 23:5. II. The Passover. This is the beginning of the appointment of the feasts " in their seasons." And the passover takes the first place, as it is said in the history of its institution;-" This month shall be unto you the beginning of months ; it shall be the first month in the year to you" (Exodus 12:2). God then gave Israel the blood of the lamb to be their safety when the last fearful judgment came, the destruction of the firstborn. And so the Passover stands at the commencement of the festivals of the year, as the memorial of the great deliverance which introduced the people into all subsequent blessings and privileges. The blood was a token unto them of what God did when He saw it. This was not a feast for the congregation assembled before the Lord. But every man was to take a lamb according to the house of his fathers, a lamb for a house. Provision was however made that all might partake and that none might be left out. And this tells us of the sufficiency of Christ and His blood for His household, the Church. The details of this institution are variously set forth throughout Scripture, but belong more especially to the place of its origin in Exodus 12:1-20. Here it is mentioned as introducing us to that which followed in inseparable connection with it, and which was also the first time in the year when the whole congregation were to appear before the Lord, the feast of unleavened bread. So in 1 Corinthians 5:7-8, we read:-" Christ our passover is sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast." But it was instituted at the close of the second Sabbath in the year, " the fourteenth day of the first month at even:" this is the point insisted upon as introductory to the fifteenth which was the first day, that is, a resurrection day, and commenced a feast continuing through seven days, tho next point being harvest in the land. The action of the Lord in Luke 6:1 seems to have reference to this : "On the second sabbath after the first, He went through the corn-fields, and His disciples plucked the ears of corn."

Leviticus 23:6. III. The feast of Unleavened Bread. This was the first of the three feasts of the year in which every male of the congregation was required to appear before the Lord. On the first day there was an holy convocation, as also on the seventh. During the whole seven days unleavened bread was to be eaten, and a daily offering was made by fire unto the Lord. In Numbers 28:1-31, the particular offerings are specified; but here it is said generally " offerings made by fire," the point set forth being that acceptable sacrifices were offered to God during the whole time. No servile work was to be done; for the people were to stand before the Lord as those whom He had freed from the service and bondage of Egypt. They were to be as " the Lord’s freedmen " (1 Corinthians 7:22). These circumstances in’ general mark the restraint put upon nature, as connected with and consequent upon the knowledge of deliverance. The immediate condition into which the Israelites were brought was in direct contrast to that of Egypt. The latter was the old leaven and the leaven of malice and wickedness, as contrasted with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. But the offerings made by fire were, during the whole season, a continual token of God’s acceptance and approval. These were the seven days of nature, during which purity was to be maintained in restraining nature which had had its full course in Egypt, but with hard bondage. Perhaps the holy convocations exhibit the circumstances of the Church at the commencement and close of her course, between the first knowledge of redemption and the waiting for its manifestation at the second coming of ’the Lord. But the days of unleavened bread have a moral application to the whole period of the Church’s sojourn here, and the next feast, to which it is introductory, is mentioned in connection with the land, though that, too, as being now revealed, is the present portion of faith.

Leviticus 23:10. IV. The feast of First Fruits. This feast has no exact date. It was at the commencement of harvest. When the harvest was ripe, and the sickle was put into the corn, then the first sheaf of corn was to be waved, and all that followed, in the course of the " weeks," took its commencement from that period (Deuteronomy 16:9). But, though the time depended upon the ripening of the harvest, a certain day is specially mentioned, " the morrow after the Sabbath," that is, the first day of the week, a resurrection day.* With the wave sheaf were to be offered, a burnt offering, a meat offering, and a drink offering of wine. Thus we have the type of the Lord Jesus the first fruits from the dead, and see Him also in the priest presenting this offering before God. And afterwards, but not before, does the partaking of the fruit of the land commence. The period of seven Sabbaths or fifty days then runs on, and on the morrow after the seventh Sabbath, another resurrection day, a new meat offering is presented, of two wave loaves baken with leaven. This is the pentecostal acceptance of the

Church, and connected with it are a burnt offering with its meat and drink offerings, a sin offering, and a peace offering. These, it is said, shall be " holy unto the Lord for the priest." And on this day is a holy convocation. The burnt offering is, as ever, a sweet savour unto the Lord; but the sin offering and peace offering, with the wave loaves, are holy to the Lord for the priest. The two lambs of the peace offering are specially mentioned.

Christ is our peace, and in Him we have peace. The poor and the stranger are to be remembered in this harvest time, and the corners of the field are to be left unreaped for them, together with the gleanings of the harvest. The parable of the tares refers to the period of harvest as a time, not only of deliverance, but also of preparation for judgment, and both points seem to be here set forth. But some, though only a few, are spared in the judgment and left. And therein is instruction for the Church in the grace of God. We have, then, in type the Church. But this day might arrive while the course of the seven days of unleavened bread was running on : for Abib was the month of "ears of while the harvest looks forward to the time of the end ; but regarding the long unmentioned interval between this and the seventh month, the feast of trumpets, the feast may refer chronologically to Israel, and the period of the Church be in the blank. Nevertheless, what has gone before is typical of that period. The sheaf of first fruits is " to be accepted for you ; " the first fruits of wave loaves with leaven are " the first fruits unto the Lord." In this we see full acceptance, but there is the leaven of nature remaining, and therefore there must be the burnt offering, the sin offering, and the peace offering. But the wave loaves were not burnt; it was in the sacrifice of Christ that the acceptance was known, and it was testified of by the descent of the Spirit upon all the disciples, so that " they were all filled with the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2:1-47). In these circumstances, and having being cautioned as to the harvest, we are left, during the long period of silence, until the seventh month, when the blowing of the trumpets awakens us to a new scene, and calls up Israel, and is a memorial to God. This feast of weeks was the second at which all the males were to appear before God.

Leviticus 23:24. V. The Feast of Trumpets. The Sabbath of days and weeks was accomplished, the closing of harvest time had been mentioned, an unnoticed interval had elapsed, the revolution of months had passed away, and the seventh, God’s appointed season, had arrived. On the first day of this month there was a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. The only points here mentioned are, the blowing of the trumpets, the doing no servile work (it was a Sabbath), and an offering made by fire unto the Lord. This appears to be a preparatory feast to that which follows. The blowing of trumpets seems in general to signify an awakening of attention (Numbers 10:1-36), either to convey some intimation to the congregation, or as a memorial before God. It is here said generally to be a memorial, that is, probably, both to the Lord and the people. But it proceeds from the Lord, as being His appointment, and is introductory to the day of atonement, as the latter is to the feast of tabernacles. There are several remarkable correspondencies between these feasts and those at the commencement of the year.

Leviticus 23:27. VI. Day of atonement. The special injunctions here given with regard to this day are-" Ye shall afflict your souls, and offer an offering made by fire unto the Lord. And ye shall do no work in that same day." This was the day on which the High Priest went into the holiest, and made atonement there, and in the holy place, and at the altar, and for the people, " that they might be clean from all their sins " (Leviticus 16:1-34). But it is the position of the children of Israel as waiting outside, and not what was going on within, which is here set forth. They were to afflict their souls. And so in our own case, the gospel trumpet has sounded, the whole mystery of God’s grace has been declared, we know the work on which our great High Priest is engaged, and in the meantime, whilst waiting in expectation of His coming forth, we are to take up our cross, and thus in affliction of soul to confess Him before men. As soon as the revolving Sabbaths, according to the purpose and counsel of God, are accomplished, this day falls in with the great Jubilee, when the trumpet, loud of sound, shall re-echo through the heavens and the earth (Leviticus 25:9). But the present is the season of waiting and humiliation on earth, in the knowledge of what has been done there, and what is now going on in heaven (John 14:3). This is preparatory to the quickly succeeding feast of tabernacles and ingathering, the third and last occasion in the course of these feasts in which the whole congregation were to present themselves before the Lord.

Leviticus 23:34. VII. The feast of Tabernacles. This feast was to continue during the often mentioned period of seven days, but in this case alone there is an eighth day mentioned.

It was connected with the year of release (Deuteronomy 31:10). The directions given in Numbers 29:13-38, for the sacrifices connected with this season, show that a stream of blood was continually flowing. The appointment of this feast is for those who were born Israelites, and the object here mentioned is, " that your generations may know that I made the children of Israel to dwell in booths, when I brought them out of the land of Egypt." As the passover was the memorial of their deliverance, so was this of the circumstances into which they were brought, and which continued until they entered the land, after which came the celebration of the remembrance of them. To dwell in tents is ever the condition of the faithful (Hebrews 11:9): but, as having the earnest of the inheritance, we in a sense can keep the feast as a memorial. But it actually continues during the seven days of nature, and on the eighth, the great day, begins the communication of blessing to others, the rivers of living water flowing out; and on that day the holy convocation is a solemn assembly, a day of restraint. It is also connected with the ingathering of " the fruit of the land," and is a " rejoicing before the Lord." It is said in general with respect to these feasts, that the offerings, &c., are to be offered, everything upon its day, though the days are not here particularised. For the object of this chapter is to show the course and connection of the feasts through the period of revolving time. We may regard them in the main as a mystical history of God’s people. We keep the feasts by being found in those circumstances which are according to the place and progress of what God in the Son, or in the Holy Ghost, is doing for us. If we regard as an anti- typical fulfillment the recorded history of the actual circumstances of the people of God in the Scriptures, it would be as follows:- I. The Sabbath presents generally the rest in God- in Jesus, and through the Holy Ghost.

II. The Passover points to that time when the Lord and the twelve sat down together, and when He was slain as the Lamb.

III. The Feast of unleavened Bread is the time during which we must obey (1 Corinthians 5:7-8), be prepared to realize the Lord’s declaration, "In the world ye shall have tribulation," and put our trust in His prayer that we should be kept from the evil.

IV. The Feast of First Fruits shows forth the resurrection of the Lord Jesus ; while the offerings connected with it signify the knowledge of atonement and acceptance. When the Day of Pentecost was fully come, the two wave loaves were offered by the Holy Ghost sent down from the risen Jesus. And thus the Church was formed and accepted in the Beloved, in spite of her leaven. During the unnoticed period, the mystery is developed in the person of Saul, that the Gentiles may be fellow- heirs, the middle wall being broken down. The Jew, as such, in the meantime was broken off.

V. The Feast of Trumpets. The proclamation of the gospel of the grace of God by Paul, as revealing the Son in him the chief of sinners, and as triumphing over all man’s evil, in the everlasting purpose of a God of love.

VI. The Day of Atonement. The effect of the gospel announced by the trumpets, not without a reference to the end, when the Jews shall look upon Him Whom they have pierced, and mourn.

VII. The Feast of Tabernacles. The Lord went up secretly to this, which was then called a feast of the Jews. But we have a sample in the Acts, in the deliverance of Peter from prison, of the hand of the Lord coming in the power of His own love to deliver His people. When He sees that their strength is gone, He will suddenly arise and bring about the full accomplishment of the feast of Tabernacles. Then, as shown by this " secret " action in John 7:10, He Himself will be in their midst, and they, after believing on Him, will become the ministers of universal blessing. The Church, nevertheless, in a higher sense anticipates all this; for though it may be rightly applied to the Jew in type, it also belongs, as does all Scripture, to the Church.

These things thus stand in historical order in the Scriptures:

I. The Jew cut off (Romans 11:1-36).

II. Acts 15:14. " God at the first did visit the Gentiles, to take out of them a people for His name."

III. "After this I will return again, and build the tabernacle of David that is fallen down," &c.

IV. " That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles," &c. " Known unto God are all His works, from the beginning of the world." "It is the Lord Who doeth all these things."