When you think about your faith you might quickly go to things that you do that might seem different or odd to others.  Maybe focusing on keeping the Sabbath or Holy Days, or maybe you focus on not eating certain things.  Once upon the time the church used to call the understanding that God has given the truth and you would measure the time you have been in the church by how many years since you came into the truth.

I have never been one for memorization.  Some people are great with it.  I wished I could remember complex things that I have had to figure out over the years.  I learn many things and then after time I begin to forget them and have to learn them all over.  This goes for more than just work related things.  I have often said that when I was growing up in the church I would forget what each of the Holy Days pictured and would have to re-learn them every year.  Some things though I don’t forget.  The more I use something, the more I remember it especially of it’s of higher importance to me.  After a number of years forgetting the meaning of the Holy Days, I decided to study them as a group. Even though the complexity was greater, It was easier because they are all connected giving a better picture of the plan of God.

Over the years I have had a few opportunities to go through them either by myself or to share them with others.  At camp we have three evenings as the boys are settling down for bed to discuss our collective hope and faith and usually on the last night I will go through the plan of God as a package so they can see it all together.

Recently I have had the opportunity to go through it for two different people that were new to this way of life.  It was so exciting to share with them why we do what we do.  How much meaning and purpose is in the things we do every year.  One of those times I took about a half hour to go through the plan where the last time I went through it I only have about 12 minutes and that was challenging.

Today I am going to go through that plan of God as a package including the Holy Days and the incredible purpose that God is working out on this earth to answer a vital question for this world.

What about everyone else?

Now why is it important to go through the plan of God in this way?  After all we cover all of these themes at their appointed times in the year so if you add up all the sermons you hear in a year you can get this information in much more detail then I am going to have time for today.  The reason I have found it valuable is to answer the question, “What about everyone else?”

I recently spent some time on various Christian websites where I keyed in the question, what is the plan of God for mankind.  I looked at dozens of pages from mainstream religious organizations and while I was surprised to see a on or two had some knowledge of the return of Christ, none of them answered the question of what happens to everyone else?  All of them approached the Question from the point of view of the one seeking eternal life. 

The scriptures that were offered as answers were from leaders in the church to their followers.  What about everyone else? 

God does not leave people out

History is full of people that never accepted Jesus Christ nor believed in or on Him.  The Vast majority of people never had a chance to know Jesus because God did not call them. 

So after looking at all these groups tell about personal salvation only to those that seek a relationship with God, I was more convinced than ever how important it is that we answer that question “What about everyone else?”

In fact, if you put that question into google and search the answers are not very encouraging.  When you read the words of Jesus to His followers and the Apostles later it makes clear the way of Salvation is through Jesus Christ and so it’s no wonder that so many have a dark view of the rest of humanity.

Last time we talked about how our shared hope is in a God who has a plan to reconcile with the creation He created.  God has worked out the details of how to bring many sons and daughters into His family.  When you study your bible from end to end you see a beautiful thread throughout that directs the reader to that plan.

Don’t start a book in the middle

So why does the world have the dim view they have?  It’s because they start in the middle of the book.  When you ask most Christians in the world today about salvation they begin with Jesus Christ. 

If they go back to the Old Testament it’s to show the fall of man and the need for the sacrifice of Christ which is true.  But to start in the middle of the book misses the fundamental focus of the plan of God, to reconcile with mankind.

In Genesis 1 we read about how God created all things and in numerous places, we read that everything He made was good.  God did not create evil.  The Earth was not some experiment that went wrong.

 

Genesis 1:31 - 2:3  31 Then God saw everything that He had made, and indeed it was very good. So the evening and the morning were the sixth day.  NKJ Genesis 2:1 Thus the heavens and the earth, and all the host of them, were finished.  2 And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done.  3 Then God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and made.

 

Notice that God counts the day as the evening first and all of the creation was done in six days leaving one day to be sanctified and set apart.  God set an example for His creation to follow.  If you read throughout the bible you find references to the Sabbath rest for people, for animals, for land and even debt.   From Land Sabbaths, to the Jubilee God has a plan to restore and reconcile all things.  God uses special days throughout the year to teach aspects of His plan of restoration and reconciliation. 

  Turn over to Leviticus 23.

Lev 23 lists the Feast Days as they appeared in the Old Testament. Today, most Christians don’t think they have any value today outside of history.  But we will see these days are more important than almost anyone realizes.  But these days are for those people that are in the dark. 

Leviticus 23:1-2  NKJ And the LORD spoke to Moses, saying,  2 "Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: 'The feasts of the LORD, which you shall proclaim to be holy convocations, these are My feasts.

So we first see that the feast days belong to God, they are His.  As God’s property, He gets to decide their purpose and function. 

And as the personal property of the Almighty, they are special in so many ways.  They teach those who keep them about how God interacts with His people and about His plan for mankind.  The first day mentioned in this list of feast days is the weekly Sabbath.  The Sabbath is a Feast Day.

Leviticus 23:3   3 ' Six days shall work be done, but the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work on it; it is the Sabbath of the LORD in all your dwellings.  

Even going back three chapters before the Old Covenant, the Sabbath was a teaching tool used by God to teach the Importance of time for man and time for God.  As we talked about last time it represents the time that God is giving mankind to rule himself and discover what life is without God in his life.  At the end of that time is the Sabbath where God steps in and directs man back to Himself.  We read how God taught to rest from our labor during creation week, it’s also the 4th commandment and throughout the Old Testament.  In the New Testament in so many places, Jewish leaders collided with Christ about its purpose.

Mark 2:27-28   27 And He said to them, "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath.  28 "Therefore the Son of Man is also Lord of the Sabbath."

The Sabbath was not simply a requirement for some ancient agreement, it has a purpose to help mankind and as Jesus is Lord of the Sabbath that was made to help mankind we would be best advised to try to keep it the way Christ did.  With Joy and Purpose.

Hebrews 4:9 talks about a Sabbath Rest that remains for the people of God, sometimes into the future, to bring full circle this idea of rest from the time we have spent away from God.

Next we have the Annual Days that detail the different aspects of how God will accomplish all of this.

Leviticus 23:4-5   4 ' These are the feasts of the LORD, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times.  5 'On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the LORD's Passover.

So the Sacred Calendar starts off in spring with first month with Passover.  Now students of God’s Festivals will note the changes to way the feasts were kept in the time of Moses and then into the New Testament.  No better example of how the practice and meaning have grown than that of Passover. 

 

Old Testament

• Lambs blood needed on post
• Deliverance from Egypt (Sin)
• Focused on Promised Land
• Pharaoh is the villain
• Ate Lamb UL Bread

 

New Testament

• Christ’s (Lamb) blood needed
• Deliverance from Sin (Death)
• Focused on the KOG
• Satan is the Villain
• Eat UL Bread and Wine.

 

Jesus became the Passover Lamb that would pay for all sin of mankind and open the door to Eternal life that was Closed since the Garden of Eden.  We know that Christ kept the Passover not simply because of his family but because these are God’s days and has so much meaning for His people who follow them.

Next we have Feast of Unleavened Bread.  Looking at the Old and new aspects to this we can look at how Christ magnified the Law as a templet for what God needs from those who wish to enter His Kingdom.  We are to remove the carnal nature of Man to make room for and be filled with God’s righteous Character.  In both the Old and new Testament the Ritual of removing Leaven from our lives(sin) and replacing it with Unleavened Bread (Righteousness) is still a valid teaching tool today.  Paul teaches the church in Corinth to keep the feast of unleavened bread in 1Cor5:7-8

 

1 Corinthians 5:7-8   7 Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.  8 Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.  

 

He links Passover and Unleavened bread together as integral to the journey as Christians.  But there is one more important piece if we are going to become Christians and that is the Holy Spirit.  Without the Holy Spirit we cannot be one with God as Christ promised.

The last spring time festival is Pentecost.  Now in the Old Testament, the festival centered around giving thanks to God in a special way.  They were to give a special offering in an elaborate way of the first harvest (First fruits) and the Priest would offer this offering to God on behalf of the people.  Today, though, we keep the symbol of first fruits which Christ Himself represents. 

We are also part of those first fruits as Christ is the first born of many brethren.  In Pentecost we link not only the yearly festivals but the weekly Sabbath to count from the Sabbath during Unleavened Bread 7 Sabbaths, until we get to the Day after the 7th Sabbath.  7x7 is 49 +1 day = 50 days, Pentecost means count 50.  We are to count from God’s days until we get to the day that promises the Holy Spirit.

Christ promised the Holy Spirit to His followers and that promise was fulfilled 50 days after His resurrection.  He was sacrificed and crucified on a Festival Day, He was in the Ground and Resurrected not just during a Festival week but on a Weekly Sabbath.  The Holy Spirit was Delivered to the Church on a Festival Day.  All of these happened on God’s Holy Days as spelled out in Leviticus 23.

Of course, those people of the Old Testament Church in the wilderness that were keeping these days as part of their covenant with God did not understand their future significance but for those that kept them during the new covenant got to receive their true meaning.  These Days have been fulfilled in our history but they are being fulfilled each and every year in our lives as we keep them today because we are always coming out of Egypt (sin), always removing sin from our lives and filling our lives with Unleavened bread that represents the body of Christ and His righteousness. And lastly was are always renewing the Holy Spirit in our lives.  When do we no longer need these things?  Not any time I can think of.

But there is another reason to keep the feasts of God.  And that is the remaining festivals represent events that still have not happened yet.  Remember that these represent the events that must come to place before God’s plan is complete.  The Next day is the feast of Trumpets.  Lets read what Leviticus tells them to do.

 

Leviticus 23:24-25   24 "Speak to the children of Israel, saying: 'In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation.  25 'You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the LORD.' "

 

 

Later there is mention of burnt offering of a bull, a ram and 7 Lambs.  But there really isn’t much meaning here.  The reason is that they were merely keeping a day as a place holder so that future Generations would understand its full meaning.  It is this symbolism of the blowing of the trumpets on this day that represents the 7th trumpet blast that will announce the second coming of the messiah.  They kept the day and did not know why.  During the first century the Church of God did not have the book of Revelation to refer to end-time events.  Jesus only references His return with the sound of a trumpet once near the end of  Mathew 24.  But later, the Apostle Paul references great detail on how the saints will be changed from flesh to spirit and the dead raised at Christ’s second coming.

NKJ 1 Corinthians 15:52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

1 Thessalonians 4:16-18   16 For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.  17 Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord.  18 Therefore comfort one another with these words.

There are many prophecies from the OT that you can piece some of this together but much of this, like the book of Revelation, is revealed by God.  We keep the day with so much promise of the return of the King Jesus Christ to rule this Earth. 

When God’s people die they sleep just like all of the other people of the world but on the day of Christ's return, represented by the Feast of Trumpets, there will be a resurrection of the saints.   

As fantastic as this is we are not done yet because this resurrection is not for everybody else.  It is for the people of God who have kept the faith and worshiped Him in Spirit and Truth.  We now come, 10 days later to the Day of Atonement. 

To those of the Old Testament it was the most solemn of all the Holy Days, no work of any kind accompanied by fasting for the day as they draw close to God.  They performed a strange ceremony where the priest put the sins of the people on a goat and sent him into the wilderness.  But the day of Atonement for New Testament Christians means so much more than the sins on a goat.  While we do fast as well and afflict ourselves and draw close to God, we also look forward to the fulfillment of that ceremony of the goat.

Revelation 20:1-2  NKJ Then I saw an angel coming down from heaven, having the key to the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.  2 He laid hold of the dragon, that serpent of old, who is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years; 3 and he cast him into the bottomless pit, and shut him up, and set a seal on him, so that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years were finished.

Satan will be taken out of the picture for the first time since the Garden of Eden and for a Sabbath of a thousand years, after 6 thousand years of man living with Satan as his god. 

Then comes the Feast of Tabernacles, where man lives under Christ’s rule for the first time in History.  The Saints will rule with Christ for a thousand years to show mankind how to live in peace.  IN the Old Testament the children of Israel made temporary dwellings during this week-long festival.  Why?  For them it pictured the temporary existence waiting to inherit the Promised Land.  But for us, we live in temporary dwelling during this week picturing the Kingdom of God.

Now all of these festivals seem to focus on God’s people and like the churches of this world focusing on those who want personal salvation, you could get the wrong idea of their purpose if you stop here.  The purpose of these Festivals are to teach all of mankind what happens when you live apart from God.  Prophecy teaches that unless these days are shortened, no flesh would be saved.  Man will destroy himself unless God intervenes and fortunately for man that is the plan.  God will intervene and stop Satan, stop man and then teach.  At the end of the thousand years is one more festival day.  One more day to put right everything that has ever been wrong.  Mankind will be resurrected and given a chance to know God, and to live his way of life.  We know that Satan will be released at the end of the thousand years.  The purpose is simple.  Everyone will be given a choice.  Up till now people think they have free will but they really haven’t had a chance to know God.  God has not revealed Himself to this world  The bible tells us in so many places how Satan has blinded man and how God has not revealed the truth.  But someday he will.  That Last festival of the year, the Eighth day of the Feast of Tabernacles, pictures the time when Mankind is raised from the dead and judged but that judgment comes in the form of life under Jesus Christ as their leader.  We are being Judged now.  They will be judged later.  Do you think that we get to know about God when we are judged but they are supposed to be Judged without knowing about God?  That is not how God works. 

We have these festivals, half of which picture the future and the other half still have meaning and purpose for those who keep them.  They tell us the story about what God is doing to bring salvation to everyone else.  The holidays of man do not teach what happens to everyone else, and really don’t teach what happens to God’s people now.  Those days are counterfeit meant to distract a world from the true purpose of God.  For those that embrace God’s day, they share in the hope and promise and Good News that everyone will have a chance to choose a life of peace and eternity with God.