DOES GOD HAVE A CALENDAR?
THE FEASTS OF ISRAEL HOLD A KEY TO GOD’S TIMING IN HISTORY
Adapted from Kairos Magazine
Sept – Oct 2003
Volume 7 Issue 1
“IT SEEMS THAT, THOUGH OUTSIDE OF TIME, GOD DOES INTERVENE
WITH SET TIMES AND SEASONS FOR SPECIFIC ETERNAL PURPOSES.”
Does God have a calendar? Does He keep an appointment book? Because we believe our eternal God to live outside of time, we may have failed to perceive that everything in His Word reveals how VERY AWARE OF TIME God really is. In fact, God has chosen to use history as His stage and to work within times and seasons.
While God can do anything at any time, He has nevertheless established set times and appointments for acting in our midst. Let’s consider certain “divine appointments” called feasts or festivals and what they reveal.
The Feasts
“Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come”
(Exodus 12: 17‘So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance)
At the institution of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, better known to us as the Feast of Passover, the Children of Israel celebrated their deliverance from Egypt. Notice that the Feast is instituted as a lasting ordinance. To this day worldwide, millions of Jewish people gather in faith to celebrate and keep the Passover in the same way that Moses handed down the commandments. They draw together with their families, exactly as the Word prescribes. Thousands travel to Israel to keep the Feast, endeavoring to be more literal in the coming together as a nation.
Is there spiritual reality and substance to this act? Is the Lord aware of this gathering? Is the Spirit of God hovering, moving, responsive to these gatherings of Jews, who are obediently fulfilling a 5,000 year old mandate from the Lord?
We as Christians, can be tempted to a shallow response of, “Yes, but Jesus fulfilled the Law.”
But what does Jesus a righteous Jew in esteeming the law say?
(Matthew 5: 17“Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18“For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19“Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven. 17‘So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance.1)
When Jesus refers to “these commandments,” to what is he referring? He must be referring to God’s commands of the corporate gathering and keeping of the Feasts.
We are also confronted with the reality that the Lord has said that these Feasts are “His Feasts.” They are not a cultural observance to be practiced by an ethnic group; rather, they are a “lasting ordinance.” This is the Word of God. So, how should we consider the fact that millions of Jewish people are obediently gathering together to follow this commandment of the Lord till this day? What can we learn about these gatherings?
A few important facts regarding the gatherings of the Lord:
1. The principle of gathering is a lasting mandate
(Exodus 12: 17‘So you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this same day I will have brought your armies out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day throughout your generations as an everlasting ordinance.1).
2. When gathering, no one is to appear before the Lord empty handed
(Exodus 23: 15“You shall keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread (you shall eat unleavened bread seven days, as I commanded you, at the time appointed in the month of Abib, for in it you came out of Egypt; none shall appear before Me empty); 16“and the Feast of Harvest, the firstfruits of your labors which you have sown in the field; and the Feast of Ingathering at the end of the year, when you have gathered in the fruit of your labors from the field. 1)
3. Three times a year all the men are to appear before the Sovereign Lord
(Exodus 23: 17“Three times in the year all your males shall appear before the Lord God.)
These gatherings are not only to be a gathering of the people with each other, but infinitely more importantly, they are to be a gathering of the people represented by the men, unto their God.
If the people will honor God with their gathering, God will honor them by protecting their territories.
(Exodus 23: 22“But if you indeed obey His voice and do all that I speak, then I will be an enemy to your enemies and an adversary to your adversaries., 34: 22“And you shall observe the Feast of Weeks, of the firstfruits of wheat harvest, and the Feast of Ingathering at the year’s end. 23“Three times in the year all your men shall appear before the Lord, the Lord God of Israel. 24“For I will cast out the nations before you and enlarge your borders; neither will any man covet your land when you go up to appear before the Lord your God three times in the year. 25“You shall not offer the blood of My sacrifice with leaven, nor shall the sacrifice of the Feast of the Passover be left until morning.)
The next generation is to gather together along with the adults, to be taught the ways of the Lord. In this way the fear of the Lord is to be passed down to the next generation.
(Deut 31: 9So Moses wrote this law and delivered it to the priests, the sons of Levi, who bore the ark of the covenant of the Lord, and to all the elders of Israel. 10And Moses commanded them, saying: “At the end of every seven years, at the appointed time in the year of release, at the Feast of Tabernacles, 11“when all Israel comes to appear before the Lord your God in the place which He chooses, you shall read this law before all Israel in their hearing. 12“Gather the people together, men and women and little ones, and the stranger who is within your gates, that they may hear and that they may learn to fear the Lord your God and carefully observe all the words of this law, 13“and that their children, who have not known it, may hear and learn to fear the Lord your God as long as you live in the land which you cross the Jordan to possess.”
14Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, the days approach when you must die; call Joshua, and present yourselves in the tabernacle of meeting, that I may inaugurate him.” So Moses and Joshua went and presented themselves in the tabernacle of meeting. 15Now the Lord appeared at the tabernacle in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood above the door of the tabernacle.1)
4. Strangers and foreigners to the covenants of God were also to be included in the celebration of the Feasts.
(Deut. 31: 12“And you shall rejoice before the Lord your God, you and your sons and your daughters, your male and female servants, and the Levite who is within your gates, since he has no portion nor inheritance with you.)
As we consider these Scriptures and thoughts, and whether or not God actually has and keeps a calendar, let us also consider the life of Jesus.
(Gal 4: 4But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.)
This and other Scriptures give us the indication that Jesus’ arrival was an intervention of God, not so much INTO time, but in cooperation and in sync with time. It seems that, though outside of time, God does intervene with set times and seasons for specific eternal purposes.
The Feast of Passover
This can also be seen with Jesus’ death. “When Jesus had finished saying all these things, he said to His disciples, ‘As you know, the Passover is two days away, and the Son of Man will be handed over to be crucified.’
(Matt 26: 1Now it came to pass, when Jesus had finished all these sayings, that He said to His disciples, 2“You know that after two days is the Passover, and the Son of Man will be delivered up to be crucified.”1)
Jesus the Lamb of God, sent to take away the sin of the world, was offered up on Passover--the exact season when the blood was applied to the doorposts so that the spirit of death could pass over and the deliverance from bondage could take place. A coincidence? Or was God at work in His eternal Feasts, heralding in their fullness, not so they would be stopped (they are an “eternal ordinance”) but so that they might be celebrated with greater joy and understanding, looking as we all are, Jews and Christians, for their ultimate fulfillment at the end of the age.
The Feast of Pentecost
The Feast of Weeks is a harvest feast, celebrating the abundance of harvest. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit descended on the early church leaders in power, and the first harvest of souls was brought into the Kingdom through the sickle of the Church.
(Read Acts 1: 1The former account I made, O Theophilus, of all that Jesus began both to do and teach, 2until the day in which He was taken up, after He through the Holy Spirit had given commandments to the apostles whom He had chosen, 3to whom He also presented Himself alive after His suffering by many infallible proofs, being seen by them during forty days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God.
4And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; 5“for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”1).
Was this also a “set time” in which God intertwined the eternal with the temporal in releasing His purpose?
Why didn’t Jesus baptize his disciples with the Holy Spirit when He ascended? Why did He have them wait until Pentecost?
(Read Acts 2: 1When the Day of Pentecost had fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. 2And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.)
God waited UNTIL the day of Pentecost was fully come. Why? I believe it can be argued that God was following a pattern that He himself established, and that this Divine timing demonstrates the community of the purpose of God.
We see that two of the three major Feasts of the Lord were divinely intertwined with the ultimate ministry of Christ and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the public preaching of the Risen Christ.
If this is the case, then what should be our response to the Feasts of the Lord? How should we be positioning our hearts and spirits toward these Feasts? As natural “aliens” to the covenants of Israel, but those who have been grafted in through faith, should we be looking and listening for the purposes of God during these times?
There remains a third Feast that has not been fulfilled in the era we call the Church age, but it is a Feast which also has powerful prophetic promises tied to it for the last days.
The Feasts of Tabernacles
“Then the survivors from all the nations that have attacked Jerusalem will go up year after year to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, and to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. If any of the peoples of the earth do not go up to Jerusalem to worship the King, the LORD Almighty, they will have no rain. If the Egyptian people do not go up and take part, they will have no rain. The LORD will bring on them the plague he inflicts on the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles. This will be the punishment of Egypt and the punishment of all the nations that do not go up to celebrate the Feasts of Tabernacles” (Zech 14:15-19)
The Third Feast, the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Trumpets, one day will be a global celebration. Representatives from the nations of the earth will come up to the literal City of Jerusalem to receive the word of the Lord and to worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. There is no reason to believe that this is the “heavenly Jerusalem,” as the curse of the nations absent at this yearly Feast is the physical curse of the lack of rain.
It is, to me, nothing short of fantastic and amazing to realize a few important facts about this verse and how it relates to this time in human history.
First, never before in human history would it have been so possible for representatives from “all the nations” to gather annually in Jerusalem. It is only in the past 60 years, with the coming of the ease and availability of international air travel, for the nations to gather together in one place.
Second, it is extremely notable that for the past twenty years, through the work of the international Christian celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, we are beginning to see something that could be a first fruits fulfillment of this prophecy. Annually, for the past 15 years, Christian pilgrims from well over 100 nations from around the world who have attached themselves to the God of Israel are making the journey to come and “present themselves to the Sovereign Lord.”
While I am not suggesting that this is yet on the scale of an actual fulfillment to Zechariah’s prophecy, it is certainly an unprecedented event in salvation history and something well worth our spiritual attention.
The early believers in Jesus received a word to tarry in Jerusalem for the promised Holy Spirit. We see in Scripture that there is coming another divine appointment with the nations, this time to coincide with the Feast of Tabernacles.
Practical thoughts
While I am not suggesting that we as Gentile believers in Yahweh have an obligation to religiously keep the feasts, but I do think that we have not properly understood, valued and honored the feasts in our midst, not only for their historic and teaching value, but for their ongoing spiritual importance.
I would suggest that as a Church we would be wise to do the following related to the Feasts:
1. Honor the eternal nature of the Feasts by studying them and the spiritual guidance and lessons we can learn from them.
2. Be aware of the dates, the times and seasons of the Feasts, and be conscious of them on our calendars.
3. Consider celebrating the Feasts in some way. In ancient times, the “aliens in the Land” participated in the Feasts as well as the Jews.
If indeed the day is coming, as Scripture declares that it is, when all nations will celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles together in Jerusalem, then surely at some point we as people of faith who worship the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob must become more familiar with the culture and calendar through which He has chosen to reveal Himself and act within.
God has a calendar. Let’s get on His timetable!
The Holy Bible, New King James Version, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.) 1982.