Passover
According to the Hebrew calendar, this year’s Passover celebration (Pesach) begins at sundown on April 21- and ends at sundown on April 22. This is followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread April 22-29 and culminates with the Feast of First Fruits April 27-28. In contrast, Easter is on Sunday, March 31, 2024.
How did we get here?
After the 2nd century, Christianity sought to divorce itself from Judaism. The church became “catholic”, which means “universal”. This was in direct contradiction to God’s plan and accompanying warning in Romans 11.
do not be arrogant toward the branches (Judaism). If you are, remember it is not you who support the root, but the root that supports you. Rom 11:18
How quickly they forgot that Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi who came to His own. That His own rejected Him at the time John 1:11-13 did not change His identity. Neither did it alter God’s plan to redeem all of mankind through His chosen people.
In the course of rejecting Judaism, God’s original sacred Hebrew calendar was changed from a Lunar to a Solar one. This paved the way to changing the Sabbath from the last day that we call Saturday to the first day that we call Sunday. That seems a bit arrogant toward the branches. Passover was renamed “Good Friday” and “First Fruits” became Easter. The discrepancy created by the calendar change is the reason why Easter falls more than three weeks before the true Passover this year. If that weren’t arrogant enough, they added pagan influences such as Easter (fertility) eggs and “Easter Bunnies” and called or at least implied them to be Holy. Many of these changes took place at the First General Council of the Church held at Nicea in 325 AD. Why you ask? Part of the answer is found in the belief that God had rejected the Jewish people because they rejected Jesus as their Messiah and then demanded He be crucified. The error continues today as supersessionism or replacement theology that regards the gentile church as God’s replacement for Israel.
Does it matter?
After all didn’t Jesus dismiss the Pharisees who questioned the legality of His actions on the Sabbath that,
“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath.” Mark 2:27-28
Didn’t Paul rebuke the Galatians for keeping the Feasts?
But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I am afraid I may have labored over you in vain. Gal 4:9-11
Unfortunately, these arguments miss the point. Having fulfilled the law, Jesus proclaimed the Sabbath as our privilege not a legal requirement for our righteousness. The actual context of Paul’s rebuke of the Galatians in chapter four is a continuation from the previous chapter.
O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Gal 3:1-3
Both Jesus and Paul bring correction to the error of trying to fulfill the law unto righteousness via the flesh. Apart from giving our lives to Jesus, nothing we do makes us righteous. In reality, Paul told the Corinthians to celebrate the Feasts but exhorted them to do so correctly.
Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Cor 5:8
Hence we are not legally mandated to keep the Sabbath and the Feasts.
We get to!
There are seven feasts in total. Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Pentecost, Trumpets, Atonement and Tabernacles. Jesus has fulfilled the first four. Incidentally, the word “fulfilled” does not mean “replaced” or “done away with” as so many assume. Rather “fulfilled” means “to give the correct interpretation”. God often presents truth in the form of a picture. For example, baptism is a public pictorial demonstration of an inner decision, death, and rebirth. We are brought under the water as a symbol of our death and then raised as a new creation. Similarly, The Lord’s Feasts are a pictorial blueprint of God’s ultimate plan for the redemption of His entire creation from the Fall in Genesis 3.
Origins
You will notice that I did not use the term The Jewish Feasts. This is important because God first proclaimed His Feasts in Genesis 1. As in the case of many verses, the true meaning is distorted by the English translation.
And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, Gen 1:14
It is worthy to note that, the NIV omits the word seasons entirely. Season is mow`ed in Hebrew and means an appointed place, appointed time, sacred season, set feast, appointed season, appointed meeting.
God created lights in the expanse of the heavens (the stars and planets) to established His calendar that included the appointed times when He would meet with His people in spirit and eventually in person.
Taken as a whole they are an invitation to meet with God and understand the scheduled outline for His entire redemptive plan. What makes this even more poignant is that
God established His Feasts as His redemptive calendar on the fourth day before He created Man!
…even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,.for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace,which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. Eph 1:4-10
We have further confirmation in Leviticus 23 where the Lord gives Moses specific instructions for celebrating all His feasts.
The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts. Lev 22:1-2
Once again, feasts are mow`ed. They are proclaimed as holy convocations. Convocation is miqra’ a dress rehearsal. God gave Moses a blueprint of His plan that the Jews rehearsed for 1500 years and continue to rehearse today.
Passover was the prophetic declaration of Jesus’s crucifixion.
This is followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread where He took away the sin of the world then the Feast of First Fruits which was His resurrection. Fifty days later Jesus fulfilled the Feast of Pentecost in Acts 2. Now the feasts of Trumpets, (Jesus’ return) Atonement, (His Judgment) and Tabernacles (His Rest) remain to be fulfilled by Jesus.
We will be covering Jesus depicted in Passover, Unleavened Bread, and First Fruits over the next several weeks. Once again, keep in mind that understanding the Lord’s Feasts is not a religious/ legalistic practice. Rather they broaden our view of God’s total plan. They increase our faith as we see Jesus first presented pictorially in the Feasts and then later fulfilled by Him in person. They build our hope in the blessed hope. Titus 2:11-14 Having seen God’s blueprint for redemption partially fulfilled we have even more assurance that He will complete what He started. Isaiah 55:8-11 The sheer complexity and mathematical impossibility of mere chance or coincidence being the cause of it all only increase our reverence and awe of His omniscience and His perfect, eternal sovereign will.
