Mon.’s Devo - The Seven Feasts

Read: Leviticus 22:17-23:44; Mark 9:30-10:12; Psalm 44:1-8; Proverbs 10:19 All sacrifices were to be without defects. Jesus was the sacrifice and he was sinless. God is a holy God and he requires holy gifts. To not obey God’s commands brought shame on his holy name. God had rescued them from Egypt to be his holy people. God had special days for holy assembly. One was the Sabbath which was every seventh day. It was a day of complete rest because God rested on the seventh day and we will rest on the seventh millennial. (A day is as a thousand years to the Lord.) In addition to the Sabbath were the seven feasts to be celebrated at the proper times. They began with Passover which was the fourteenth day of the first month of their religious calendar which occurred in the Spring. Passover was a picture of the cross and our salvation so the first feast is our birth into the family of God. The next day on the fifteenth begins a whole week of celebrating the Festival of Unleavened Bread. During the week daily gifts are offered to the Lord because once we are saved we daily offer ourselves to the Lord. On the first and seventh day the people stop their work and observe a day of holy assembly. This week represents our whole life as a Christian and God’s sanctification process. God doesn’t require work from us when we first get saved. Then we serve him the rest of our lives until the end where we once again learn to rest in him. The third feast was the Feast of First Fruits. When they entered the land and harvested their first crop, they were to bring a bundle of the grain from the first cutting to the Lord. On the day after the Sabbath, the priest would lift it up before the Lord so that it would be accepted on their behalf. This was a picture of Jesus rising from the dead the day after the Sabbath. His resurrection made us acceptable to the Lord. He was the first fruit to rise from the dead. They were to count 50 days or seven full weeks after that day and present an offering of the new grain to the Lord. This would mark the end of the wheat harvest. They were to bake two loaves of bread from their grain. These loaves would have yeast in them. The priest would wave them before the Lord. Sacrifices were offered at every feast. This feast was called the Festival or Weeks or Pentecost. In the autumn the last three feasts were celebrated. They have yet to be fulfilled. The first day of the seventh month on the religious calendar (Tishri 1) they were to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets. This will be the day of the Rapture of the Church. It was to be celebrated with loud blasts on the trumpet. Ten days late they were to celebrate the Day of Atonement which was the most holy day of the year. It was the day the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies and offered incense and blood on the Ark of the Covenant. From the day that the church is taken to the Day of Atonement the people will have space to repent. After that day, their fate is sealed. On the fifteenth day, they were to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles or Shelters. The land was to be harvested by then (all souls were harvested for the kingdom). They were to gather certain branches to make temporary booths to live in for the week. This was to represent Jesus Second Coming where he sets up his kingdom on earth. This will be temporary because after the 1,000 years, he will bring in a new heaven and a new earth. The children of Israel were to practice these feasts so that they could remember God’s ultimate plan for the earth. In Mark, Jesus had to teach his disciples that to be the greatest in the Kingdom was to take last place and be the servant of everyone else. Anyone who takes the name of Jesus is his disciple and can do the things Jesus did. There is no clique in Jesus’ body. He taught his disciples that they were responsible for what they taught others and whatever causes us to sin, we need to get rid of. We are all tested with trials. The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a question about divorce. To understand Jesus answer we have to understand that there was the “putting away” of a wife which what what they were practicing and there was the legal act of divorce which is what Moses wrote about. They were just putting their wives away and not legally divorcing them. So when they went to marry another woman they were committing adultery because they hadn’t legally divorced their first wife. If the woman that had been put away wanted to remarry, she would be committing adultery also because she had not been legally divorced. Only a man could legally divorce a wife so the fault fell on the man. Jesus addressed this. The whole lesson went back to the fact that they were living life by their man-made laws and had ditched God’s Law given by Moses. Jesus kept bringing them back to God’s Law. Jesus explained that the only reason God gave a concession for divorce was because their hearts were hard and they couldn’t forgive or be satisfied with their wife. When God brings two people together they should not end in divorce. When people marry outside of God’s will they need to seek God’s direction. Divorce might be the right thing for them. That is the beauty of the Holy Spirit; He will lead you into all truth and illumine your steps. Lord, may we lay down our lives today for your kingdom. Use us however you need.