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Ring of Truth provides 366 daily ‘proofs’ that the Bible is consistent throughout from Genesis to Revelation, and relevant for our lives today!
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Leviticus 23:44
So Moses announced to the Israelites the appointed feasts of the Lord.
The feasts are not passed and gone.
It’s just that to our detriment we no longer take them seriously or keep them. One of the saddest things for me about ‘Western’ Christianity is that we seem incapable of replicating Godly Scriptural Celebrations.
We are afraid to celebrate Christmas because Father Christmas is now more popular and fits in nicely with our ever-increasing commercialism. We ignore Epiphany because we are sure that there were probably more than 3 wise men and we can’t condone astrology anyway.
We skip Good Friday because it caused so much suffering and we want to live in Resurrection power. We can’t remember the date of Whit Sunday and what was that in aid of anyway? And Harvest Festival Thanksgiving is just a sop to our conscience, because we know that’s the only time we voluntarily and corporately care for the needs of the poor, and Jubilee has been confused with Jamboree. Or we just say that for the Christian there are no special days, they are all good.
Am I right? Ask yourself again - why did God set up these special celebrations and how could we really celebrate them? Between Chapters 23 and 25 Moses enumerates 9 feasts: The Sabbath; The Passover; The Firstfruits; The Feast of Weeks; The Feast of Trumpets; The Day of Atonement; The Feast of Tabernacles; The Sabbath Year and The Year of Jubilee.
In brief ...
The Sabbath reinforced God’s act of creation. It emphasised that ‘man’ has been ‘designed’ to work only 6 days. The 7th is for rest and relaxation, both physically and spiritually, and to worship the Lord God, our Creator. Whenever man breaks this, it is always to his detriment, whether his ‘work’ is secular or ministry.
We have already covered the Passover but you will notice that the timing was totally specific too. The Firstfruits - God demands the first place and the best. This was to celebrate the beginning of harvest - the first of the year. 7 weeks later was the Feast of Weeks celebrating the continuing harvest - later known as ‘Pentecost’ (Greek) celebrating the Giving of the Law. The Feast of Trumpets was a separate official holiday for celebration, with The Day of Atonement 9 days later, which was designed to be a time of reflection, meditation and fasting, remembering the cost and nature of their atonement.
5 days later the week-long Feast of Tabernacles began, which was for remembering their time in the Wilderness on leaving Egypt and the miraculous provisions of God they received during that time. The Sabbath Year was designed to give the land a rest after 6 years of hard work producing crops. It also gave the farmers a rest as they could eat whatever grew up on its own - without their help.
The Year of Jubilee was to right wrongs, protect their heritage, restore property to its original owners and to release slaves - to get back to basics and live in freedom and release.
Tell me - don’t we need each of these today? Are we so much better, so much more sophisticated that they are no longer relevant - or can we do with a check-up?
Go through them again and find out.
Let’s take every opportunity to celebrate the goodness of God to us.
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