The Feasts: Introduction and the Feast of Trumpets

The Feasts of Israel: 

Introduction and The Feast Of Trumpets

Our homegroup is going to study the Jewish Feasts as they come this year.  This study introduces the Jewish feasts in broad strokes and talks about what we, as gentile New-Testament Christians, are doing talking about/celebrating the feasts at all.  We need to find a balance between ignoring them entirely as part of the "Old" covenant and falling into the error of looking to the law to somehow gain us greater favor with God.  Christianity is built on the Bible... the Whole Bible.  A Christian can and should study, know about, and honor the spirit of the feasts, but we shouldn't try to fulfill them literally.  Christ already has.  

Having this perspective, we then begin by studying the Feast of Trumpets which, at the time of this post's publication, starts tomorrow.  We look at how the Feast of Trumpets points to the rapture and use this as an opportunity to teach about the pre-tribulational rapture of the church. 

The following video is of me teaching the class.  My notes follow. 

1. Introduction: What we should and should not do with the feasts.
1. Should do:
1. Know all that we can know about them!
1. Part of the spoken word of God, recorded in scripture, and given to us, as is all scripture, “breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, 17 that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work.” (2Tim 3:16-17)
2. Part of salvific history
3. Historical Markers, ceremonial reminders of the goodness of God in the past.
4. Prophetic Messianic markers, looking forward (at that time, and today) to the work of Messiah.  Some has been accomplished, some has not yet.
2. Celebrate them in Spirit, not in letter.
1. We know that the law is good (Rom 7:12); and that it will not cease to be the word of God until the cosmos goes away (Matt 5:18)
2. We are told that at least the feasts of Passover and Tabernacles will be celebrated in the Messianic Kingdom.  
1. Exek 45: 21-26

21“In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month, you shall celebrate the Feast of the Passover, and for seven days unleavened bread shall be eaten. 22On that day the prince shall provide for himself and all the people of the land a young bull for a sin offering. 23And on the seven days of the festival he shall provide as a burnt offering to the LORD seven young bulls and seven rams without blemish, on each of the seven days; and a male goat daily for a sin offering. 24And he shall provide as a grain offering an ephah for each bull, an ephah for each ram, and a hinj of oil to each ephah. 25In the seventh month, on the fifteenth day of the month and for the seven days of the feast, he shall make the same provision for sin offerings, burnt offerings, and grain offerings, and for the oil.

2. Zech 14:16-19

“16 Then everyone who survives of all the nations that have come against Jerusalem shall go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, and to keep the Feast of Booths. 17 And if any of the families of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD of hosts, there will be no rain on them.18 And if the family of Egypt does not go up and present themselves, then on them there shall be no rain; there shall be the plague with which the LORD afflicts the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths. 19 This shall be the punishment to Egypt and the punishment to all the nations that do not go up to keep the Feast of Booths.”

3. There may be others celebrated in the Messianic Kingdom, Ezek 46:9

9“When the people of the land come before the LORD at the appointed feasts, he who enters by the north gate to worship shall go out by the south gate, and he who enters by the south gate shall go out by the north gate: no one shall return by way of the gate by which he entered, but each shall go out straight ahead.

4. We are encouraged in the New Testament to accept the festivals as part of our faith, as having been fulfilled (or to be imminently fulfilled) in Christ (from http://doctorwoodhead.com/jewish-festivals-in-the-millennial-kingdom/2/):

1. Passover was fulfilled in the death of Christ the Redeemer, but clearly continues to the Millennium as a ceremony. (I Corinthians 5:7)

2. The Feast of Unleavened Bread is being fulfilled in the holy separate walk of the believer who fellowships with our Savior (I Corinthians 5:6-8; II Corinthians 7:1; Galatians 5:7-9)

3. The Feast of Firstfruits was fulfilled in the resurrection of Christ (I Corinthians 15:23)

4. The Feast of Pentecost was fulfilled in the establishment of the Church at Pentecost fifty days after the resurrection of Jesus (I Corinthians 10:16; 12:12-13)

5. The Feast of Trumpets will be fulfilled in the future regathering of Israel at the beginning of the Kingdom (Isaiah 18:3, 7; 27:12-13; Ezekiel 37:1-14) AND IN THE RAPTURE

6. The day of Atonement will be fulfilled in its prophetic features in the final conversion of “all Israel” at the Second Coming Zechariah 12:10-13; 13:1 Romans 11:26)

2. However, we CANNOT celebrate them in letter, because:
1. EVERY festival requires a sacrifice to be made at the temple (Numbers 28-29).  
2. Three of the festivals need to be celebrated at the temple in Jerusalem.
3. God, wanting to make sure that His people knew that the temple services no longer were valid, destroyed His temple in AD 70, and it no longer provides this option to His people.  Christ is the only mediator.
4. Jesus has done away with the need for all animal sacrifice (Heb 10)
5. We are strictly warned not to look to the law for purity from sin. Gal 5:2-6:

“2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. 5 For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.6 For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

6. Also, as a blanket statement, Christ is the end of the law for righteousness, Romans 10:4
6. Also, we are not to look down on the Christian traditional holidays of Easter and Christmas, forsaking them in favor of the Jewish festivals, simply because they are “Biblical” and Christmas and Easter are not.
1. As stated above, any celebration of the Jewish festivals today are NOT strictly Biblical.  They can’t be without a temple and sacrifices.
2. The Jewish celebrations of these holidays have morphed so much over time adding tradition and additional practice that they are no more Biblical than Christmas trees and Easter eggs today.
3. The point is to honor and worship God and His Son, who instilled and fulfilled these holidays, and be edified by them.

II. Rosh Hashana (The Jewish New Year, Feast of Trumpets)

1. Lev 23:23
1. First day of the 7th month (according to the sacred year).
1. Became the first day of the civil year
2. Believed to be the anniversary of Creation
2. A blast on the trumpet to alert the people that the fall festivals have begun.
3. Begins a 10-day window of fasting and mourning over sin.
4. Heights of legalism and pious observance of the law.
5. Required a day of solemn rest and sabbath.
6. Called to gather together and worship (but not necessarily at Jerusalem)
7. Called to bring a food offering (this begins the time of fall Harvest.  Food is not yet plentiful.)
2. Numbers 29
1. The sacrifices listed
2. Normal daily offering, PLUS the new moon offering, PLUS several additional sacrifices.
3. A "pleasing aroma," literally meaning "to be made into smoke."
1. Completely consumed.  
2. A time of complete devotion is coming.
3. The kind of trumpet is not specified "A day for blasting"
1. The sound is what is signified.  H: Teruwah N. a loud shout, alarm or blast of a trumpet.
2. Verbal form is Ruwah, which is used in Job 38:7 regarding creation.
1. This is why the Jews believe that this is the day of creation.
2. If so, and if their calendar is correct in counting years, then Rosh Hashanah this year (2015) will begin year 5776 since creation.
3. Silver Trumpets of Numbers 10
1. To be blown to call people together for worship
2. To send them out
3. To sound the alarm to prepare them for battle.
4. To proclaim feasts.
5. Used for this holiday until the captivity to Babylon. Then, they were lost.
4. Shofar, Rams' horns
1. Pictures of Abraham's willingness to sacrifice Isaac.
2. They believe that the shofar proclaims that God will save the Jews and restore them to greatness at the last moment, when all hope is lost... and they're right! Matt 24
5. Both trumpets’ symbolisms are conveyed in the holiday.
4. Trumpets and the Rapture:
1. Jesus has fulfilled one aspect of Sukkot, the late fall feast, and he has fulfilled all of the Spring feasts.  
1. Note: He fulfilled them all on the actual days.
2. Trumpets is next.
2. The rapture will accomplish several things:
1. The “last trumpet” will be the rapture
1. 1Cor 15:51-52
2. 1Thes 4:16-18
2. The church (Bride of Christ) will consummate its marriage to Christ
1. At the beginning of a wedding feast, a trumpet is blown before the bridegroom as he comes to take his bride.
2. During the 7-day wedding feast, the bride and bridegroom are intimate, the guests rejoice, and those who were not ready mourn
1. Gen 29:22-28
2. Judges 14
3. Mat 25:1-13
4. Matthew 25
5. Joel 2:15-16
6. This 7-day feast represents the 7-year tribulation period, when the church is finally with her bridegroom in true intimacy, and those outside are tormented.
3. At the end of the 7-day feast is a marriage supper, the height of the party. The bride and groom are pronounced one.  Rev 19
3. On the feast of trumpets, the East gate of the temple (normally closed) was opened (Ezek 46)
1. Rev 3:8
2. Rev 4:1
3. Matt 25:10
4. John 10:7-9
5. Isa 26:19-21
6. Luke 13:24
7. Ps 27:5
4. Those who are raptured are hidden from the wrath of God.
1. a derivation of the same root word used to describe this feast in the OT can also mean “hidden.”  Some Jews call this the “hidden” feast.
2. We will be hidden from the wrath of God.
1. Psalm 27:5
2. Psalm 47
3. Isa 26:20
4. Joel 2:1, 32
5. Zeph 1:14-16; 2:3
5. Those not raptured who should have known better (those cultural Christians, and especially the Jews) will repent in large numbers, seek the Lord, and be the tribulation church.  This is also a feature of the feast of trumpets.
1. Neh 8:1-3
2. Ezra 3:5-8
3. Dan 12:1-2
3. I thought the rapture’s date was unknown?
1. The Feast of Trumpets’ fulfillment in the rapture will happen on this feast, but which which day of the feast and which year is hidden.
2. 1Thes 5:1-11 & 2Pet 3:10

1. The unsaved will be caught off guard.  The saints will not.
2. We are not to be “in the dark” about the rapture.
3. “Like a thief in the night” phrase was frequently used of the bridegroom, who would shout gather the guests hurriedly and unexpectedly for the wedding feast.

3. Matt 25:13

1. First sight of the first sliver of the crescent moon over Jerusalem. Don’t know when.  Even now, with Google’s astronomy tools, you don’t know when it will be seen.   
2. Notice it doesn’t say that you won’t know the season (ref above).
3. Also, we are to look at the signs of his coming and know that it approaches (Matt 24)

Third Saturday of Omer: Already and Not Yet

Third Saturday of Omer: Already and Not Yet

The season of counting the Omer is about taking time to look at what it cost to redeem God's people and the value that the purchase puts on salvation and freedom from bondage and then moving into gratitude for the relationship with God that came about on Mt Sinai in the first Shavuot, 50 days later.  Next Saturday will mark the half-way point of the Omer, so it is appropriate for the transition to begin from looking back to Passover to looking forward to Shavuot.  The account in Exodus of Moses' psalm is a fitting way to begin this transition.

In Exodus 15, the first psalm of scripture is recorded.  In it, Moses declares the wonderful works of God and the mighty way in which God redeemed his people. Throughout the Bible in both the Old and New Testaments, the delivery of the people of God from bondage in slavery is seen as a picture of His salvation. Egypt is a picture of sin and slavery to the flesh and the fallen nature, and Pharaoh is by extension the devil himself.  If Exodus 15:1-18 is read with this analogy in mind, it is a beautiful exaltation of the victory of God's saving love over the assault of the enemy of our souls.

Moses begins by praising God for having triumphed over the enemy in bringing salvation to the Jews. "I will sing to the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea."

In Moses' case, of course, this is an undisputedly complete task.  The statement is obviously put in the past tense.  When you read this as a picture of our salvation, though, would you have written in that way?  Can you say, with Moses, that "the Lord has triumphed gloriously" in your own salvific story?  It doesn't always feel that way, does it?  I am tempted to say, of myself, that "the Lord WILL triumph gloriously" in my life.  I see the struggles in my heart between my new nature, and my fallen flesh that is still "at war within me" (Jas 4:1). I know that I will fall to a sin, repent of it, pray against the enemy's assault in this area, and invite the Holy Spirit into this area of my heart to heal my wounds and remove my sinful desires.  I still very much feel the war that rages there, and I can think, erroneously, that my salvation is still a matter of contention between the will and work of God and the draw of sin.  This is not the case, however.  When God saves, he saves completely.  There is still a part of our perfection that is "not yet,"  the glorification that can only come after our flesh is literally put to death and we are raised glorious and incorruptible (1 Cor 15:50-58), but the salvation from sin and the destination of my soul is a "fait accompli," a finished work, a "done deal." The "horse and rider" of the enemy has been drowned in the sea of God's judgement for my sin.  The punishment for all of the wickedness in my life has already been poured out on the Lamb of God, and none was reserved for my eternal soul to bear.

This is a wonderful truth that is sometimes hard for me to internalize.  I don't have a long list of besetting sins that I fall to time and time again.  God has graciously been working in my life for many years now, and He has claimed victory in many areas that were once opportunities for the enemy.  Still, I am by no means perfect.  Just this morning, I was convicted by the Holy Spirit of a failure in an area I've been working on giving to the Lord, and I felt the regret and self-reproach that comes with the awareness of sin in my life.   What I have to get better at doing in those moments is realizing that salvation is both a process and a finished work.  It is both an "already" and a "not yet."  I get the "not yet" intuitively.  I am reminded again and again that I have not yet been glorified.  What is less intuitive for me is that the real war over my soul is done.  I am a child of the King, and I have been bought with the blood of Christ, the Lamb of God. I should be able to stand and say, with Moses, that the work of my salvation is a completed work.

Paul says the same thing, albeit in a different immediate context, when he writes that "If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation" (2 Cor 5:17).  The old is gone, and the new has come in the question of who I am.  It is a miraculous work of God in my life that the enemy of my soul is defeated.  The miracle of my salvation is, in fact, a greater one than the miracle that inspires Moses to write the first psalm. Throughout the psalm in Ex 15, Moses again and again lays out the details of the pursuit of the enemy and the conquest of God.   He doesn't tell the story in a chronological way.  Instead, he lists every aspect of Pharaoh's pursuit interrupted by a statement of God's glorious conquest.

"Pharaoh's chariots and his host he cast into the sea,  and his chosen officers were sunk in the red Sea.  The floods covered them; they went down into the depths like a stone.... The enemy said, 'I will pursue, I will overtake'... you blew with your wind; the sea covered them."(Ex 15:4, 9, 10).  Moses can't even list his enemies and the intent of the adversary without interjecting that they are all canceled, in every aspect, by the work of God.

In my life, this psalm might have been written like this: "Satan paraded ill-dressed ladies through my store, but God has freed my from lust.  I was wronged by a friend and saw anger approaching, but Jesus let me see that person through His eyes.  I was tired of waiting for an answer to a prayer and could have given in to discouragement, but I know that God is not done with me yet, and that His timing is better than my own impatience."   Whatever the enemy brings into my life as a snare, whatever sin entices me, God has already won the battle.  The enemy is already defeated.  Fait accompli!

While the enemy has already been defeated in a permanent and sure way, never to ensnare the Israelites again, they are not yet in the promised Land.  They're in Arabia,  not Canaan.  God still has a journey to lead them through, and it still lies before them to know God and His ways at Sinai. Moses is aware of this, and testifies to the "not yet" aspect of their salvation as well, when he declares, "You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain, the place, O Lord, which you have made for our abode, the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.  The Lord will reign forever and ever" (vs 17-18).   Even though Moses declares the "already" of Israel's freedom, he acknowledges that there is still a "not yet."

And that's where we find ourselves.  God has freed us from the bondage of sin.  He has won the war in a decisive and final way.  For those who have placed the blood of the Lamb on the doorposts of their heart and have had a mikvah as testimony of our cleansing by faith, the Red Sea, the line of demarcation between our current life and the life of sin that we've left behind is clear, broad, and irrevocable. We, the children of God in Christ are free forever from that life, and yet we are not in the "Promised Land" of Glory.  

Paul writes of the reality of salvation that, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified" (Rom 8:29-30). We, the living church, live in the comma between "justified" and "glorified." We are already right before a Holy God, but we have not yet been glorified in our flesh. So we live on in this tension of already and not yet, wrestling with our old nature, which has been mortified and yet dies slowly. 

How shall we live in this age of tension? And from where is our strength derived to live out the "already" in the midst of all this "not yet?" Moses sets out the answer at the top of his psalm. 

"The Lord is my strength and my song,
    and he has become my salvation;
this is my God, and I will praise him,
    my father's God, and I will exalt him." Ex 15:2

We are to live in this tension on the strength that God supplies (This is the topic for next week), not leaning on the life we have known before, on the other side of the Sea.  We are to have our life and being in the power of God. He is the one who has brought us into the "already" and will bring us into what is still "not yet."  He supplies what we need for the journey and will show us the way. 

Meanwhile, we are to live in adoration, praise, and worship of God.  Notice the purpose of Moses' heart here.  He acknowledges the fact that his salvation has come only from God, and it drives him to worship.  The "song" flows immediately out of the context of the salvific experience he just had.  How can we live any differently?  We have been saved!  That should light the fires of worship and adoration so brightly that the world will know that we are worshiping, adoring, people of God. Those who do not have a desire to worship have not known salvation. To know who you were, the bondage you were under, and the destiny that awaited you, and then to know the Lamb of God who takes your place in the way of the wrath of God and gives you instead His love and freedom, is to be driven to your knees in adoration. 

So join with me in loving, worshiping, adoring, and laying down your life before the one who has decisively moved you, once-and-for-all out of the slavery and bondage of sin and into the "already" of freedom and who will, one day, move you into the "not yet" of glory.  Praise be unto Him!

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