Part One:  The Festival Season

            The twenty-third chapter of Leviticus deals with the timing of Jewish festivals.  If this seems like a strange place to begin a study of the Gospels’ final verses, just wait, because in a few pages their importance will become clear. 

            These festivals played a part in every aspect of Jewish life.  For our work here, we are only going to be looking at half of the annual cycle.  The Spring Festivals frame the period in which Jesus fulfilled God’s destiny for mankind.  The festivals are vital to his message. 

            The Hebrew word for festival is Moyed, which means, designated time.  What is more, in Leviticus we learn that these festivals are the Lord’s designated time.  Basically, the festivals are intended to place man on God’s time schedule. 

            All too often, our prayerful intention is to manipulate God to our agenda.  Our desires, our fears, our aspirations, our goals, dreams, problems, yearnings, urges, family, life, work…On and on it goes.  One issue is resolved and instantly replaced by another.  So many self-determined issues we rarely leave time to give thanks, much less ask God to direct us toward His aims for our lives.  I know this problem with brutal intimacy.  It defines too much of my own prayer life.  It is part of human nature.  Which is why God set the Sabbath and these festivals in place as he did.  They were, as Jesus said, made for us.  They are there to teach us a lesson we all too often forget:  If we are to live life to the fullest, we must extend beyond our current confines.  Grow beyond our natural inclinations.  We must ask God for His direction.  What does He wish us to do, and when?

God’s Timing

            The festivals are intended to tell us when we are to move forward with life as usual, and when we are to stop.  In these times of cessation, we are commanded to redirect our thoughts towards the eternal.  We are told where our focus should be.

            This twenty-third chapter of Leviticus begins with a second word of critical importance.   That word is chag, which means, to celebrate.  What is interesting about this word is that as a noun, it has a second meaning, a circle.  The rabbis teach that these celebrations form a cycle of events, revolving around the annual calendar, which are meant to return man to God.  Over and over and over.

            Every word in Hebrew is derived from a verb root.  This is very important in the study of Scriptures, because this root word often contains a second message.  This deeper meaning adds a rich texture to the study of God’s word.  For example, another word that appears in the opening passages of Leviticus 23 is Korban, or offering.  The root verb for Korban means to draw near.  Thus God offers a cadence to the believer’s life through offerings.  This gentle drumbeat of time directs the believer to build their lives around the ever-present need to return to God, to return to the eternal through the celebration of offerings.

So do not let anyone make rules for you about eating and drinking or about a religious feast, a New Moon Festival, or a Sabbath day.  These things were like a shadow of what was to come.  But what is true and real has come and is found in Christ.

                                    Colossians 2:16 & 17

            By the time of Jesus’ coming, the festivals had become so corrupted and twisted they were stumbling blocks to the people.  They had become barriers between believers and God.  What we are doing here is stripping away the plethora of unnecessary and sometimes ridiculous manmade laws, and looking anew at God’s original intention.  This is very important because, as we will soon see, Jesus’ very life was based upon the timing of this holy cycle.  As in so much else, including my own life, he took what had been corrupted and made it new. 

            My wife and I live outside Oxford, where she teaches and I serve as writer-in-residence to the Baptist college.  This year, summer basically passed England by.  May was the wettest month in four hundred years of record keeping, July broke May’s record, and August was the worst by far.  Six nights that summer touched freezing temperatures.  All this left me perfectly prepared to go hiking in the Israeli high desert during a heat wave. 

            Just before I arrived in Israel, a trio of Scandinavian backpackers had collapsed from the heat while hiking to the Qumran caves and had to be helicoptered to the survival unit of the Jerusalem hospital.  On my first afternoon in Jerusalem, when temperatures topped a hundred and nine, I hiked around the city’s outer wall, and down the Kidron Valley.  By the time I entered the Old City through the Lion’s Gate, I was one giant sweat pore. 

           My goal was the Antonio Fortress, where Roman soldiers were stationed during Jesus’ time.  On the way to where the soldiers gambled for our Savior’s robe, I descended into the fortress cistern.  This is a lake-size chamber, fed by an aqueduct, some fifty feet below ground level.  The air inside the cistern was frigid.  The relief was exquisite.  I never wanted to leave.  If I could have had my way, I would still be there now.

            God’s original intent in commanding that man observe these festivals was not to bind us in temporal chains.  By building this into our weekly and yearly cycles, God wanted us to have moments when we might pull aside the veil woven from the heat of our earthly lives, the pressures and fears and needs and all the tomorrows we both fear and seek.  We were invited to enter into this divine moment and know a brief foretaste of God’s eternal kingdom. 

           How can we be sure of this?  The answer lies within the root base, the deeper meanings, of God’s message.

For You

           In Hebrew, there are quite a number of different words to address another person.  The simple pronoun ‘you’ can be structured to carry hope or love or anger or command or superiority…the list is almost endless.  So when handing down his commandments regarding the festival cycle, God could have addressed his followers in a wide variety of different ways.  Yet he did not.

          The only word God used in Leviticus 23 to address his people is l’cha.  This word has only one meaning, which is, for you.  The intention is abundantly clear.  God has established this cycle of weekly worship and annual festivals for our benefit.  This is a defining characteristic of our Maker, how we are to make no act of worship for him.  His sole purpose, in the laws he gives us and the worship he calls for, is done with us in mind. 

           God does not dictate these events to demand submission.  He invites us to draw near.  He urges us to make time in our lives for him. 

           The Messiah spoke over and over about this cycle of returning, of drawing closer to God.  His first message was just that:  In Matthew 4:17, Jesus told his first followers to repent, turn away from the world and from sin, and turn back to God, for the time and the Kingdom of Heaven were at hand.

           Thus when Jesus said that the Sabbath was made for our benefit, rather than we being made to serve the Sabbath, he was referring to this chapter in Leviticus.  The Pharisees he addressed would have known of l’cha.  They knew also that Jesus was criticizing what they had done to the Sabbath and the festivals. 

           Jesus was saying that while God had structured our worship life to draw the individual believer into close communion and be granted this cool foretaste of heaven, the priests were using these same laws to distance God from man, and place the priests in between, taking power that was God’s and claiming it as man’s. 

A Holy Cycle

           The Georgian calendar, which became the basis for our current system of dating, is a solar calendar.  The Muslim calendar is lunar.  Of all the calendars developed by mankind over the ages, only the Jewish is both solar and lunar.  But the festivals’ timing is strictly lunar.  Why is this so, and how could it possibly be important to us, today’s believer?

           Most of these annual festivals are timed to coincide with the new moon.  For those of us fortunate enough to see a full moon in a desert sky, you know what a glorious occasion that can be.  The light is strong enough to read by.  It transforms the landscape into a mystical field.  The walls of Old Jerusalem shine as though made from gemstone, a celestial city resting upon the shores of a crystal sea.

           When the Bible was written, almost all the major temples of other nations, those representing the culture’s highest deity, were oriented towards the sun.  Jewish teachings say that God used the moon to date his festivals in order to remind us that our light is reflected.  Just like the moon, we have no light of our own.  For us to shine, we must stand in God’s glory, and reflect his love and his wisdom upon the world. 

            These festivals are times of spiritual renewal, when we are invited to draw near and be reshaped so that we can be a light to the nations.

You have six days to do your work, but remember the seventh day, the Sabbath, is a day of rest.  On that day do no work but gather for worship.  The Sabbath belongs to the Lord, no matter where you live.  Proclaim the following festivals at the appointed time.

                        Leviticus 23:3-4

            The direct Hebraic translation of that last sentence reads, “These are the designated times of the Lord.”  He uses a very special term here for ‘designated’, which means that God is issuing to man a holy invitation.  It demands our response.  If we ignore the moment, if the day passes without action on our part, we have turned down a sacred summons. 

            This holy calling signifies a moment of sanctification, when man has been issued a divine invitation to draw near. 

            Yet in the centuries that followed the moment when Moses took down God’s holy instructions, man drifted further and further from the original intent behind this summons.  Despite entreaties and punishment and prophets and plagues, man moved ever further down the road of sin and self-degradation.  This divine invitation became just another last chance, ground into the world’s dust by the footsteps of a fallen race. 

            Even so, the fundamental purpose behind these weekly and annual cycles remained the same.  God issued this directive to change us.  God’s people were called to draw near and change their earthly states, from being forbidden and rejected to permissible or accepted. 

            It is little wonder that the spring portion of this festival cycle was chosen by God as the period in which he would return mankind to his holy fold.

The Unblemished Lamb

            The first annual festival mentioned in Leviticus is Passover, or Pesach, which in Hebrew means to skip or jump over.  Basically it means that a person who owes a debt is skipped over, and the burden is laid upon a sacrificial lamb, one without blemish. 

            What magnificent glory and awesome splendor is contained in those far too simple words.

            Passover is also called in Hebrew the Festival of Redemption.  The Hebrew root for this word, redemption, carries a vital meaning for us today.  The root word for redemption is ownership.

            The Messiah’s death took place on Passover.  It was the perfect sacrifice, the eternal bridge which we required.  Once again we are brought back to that crucial word used by God throughout Leviticus to address us, his followers.  L’cha.  For you.  He granted us the gift of his Son’s blood for the redemption of all mankind.

            Passover is followed by the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.  Believers were called here to put away not just all leaven, but all chamets, all bitterness.  Thus the act of scouring the house to remove all leaven was intended to represent a deeper act, that of putting aside all that was bitter and sour in our lives.  In other words, we were to put away from ourselves and our homes all sin.

            So the Messiah, God’s perfect sacrifice, was crucified upon the day when God passed over, ignoring our burdens of dark deeds and worse thoughts.  Though we were convicted, another sacrifice was made in our stead.  The perfect and unblemished Lamb was slaughtered upon Golgotha, on a day when even the sky was stained by mankind’s shadow.

            Christ then lay buried during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, when all our sin was to be set aside.  The command from God is to put all chamets beyond our borders, that is, utterly removed from sight and mind.  In a devout Jewish household, leaven is either burned or buried.  So Christ was laid to rest in a tomb, a stone was rolled into place, and he was put beyond the borders of our life.  The sacrifice for our sins, the unblemished lamb, cast out beyond earthly borders.  Because of our failings.

            L’cha.

            For us.

On The Third Day

            Desert seasons can be confusing to people used to Western climates and just one harvest cycle.  But Israel is mainly desert country, and the late winter rains mark the beginning of best growing period.  Also it is important that the next point in the festival cycle is referred to as first fruits. 

When you come into the land that the Lord is giving you and you harvest your corn, take the first sheaf to the priest.  He shall present it to the Lord, so that you may be accepted.  The priest shall present it the day after the Sabbath.

                     Leviticus 23:  9-11

           The Sabbath referred to here is the one discussed in the previous passage, which marks the Feast of the Unleavened Bread.  The offering is to be made of the first grain which emerges.  God goes on to say that nothing from this year’s crop may be consumed until this first offering is made.

           So the glorious day of our Savior’s resurrection takes place on this, the day when God commands his people to offer their first fruits.  Why?  He states the reason himself:  So that we may be acceptable.  We are invited to enter the realm of eternal harvest, with his unblemished Son as our eternal sacrifice.

This moment is so immense, the eternal gift so glorious, we too often fail to recognize that this is not the end.  Instead, it only marks the beginning of the season of eternal change.

The Season Is Upon Us

           The word my Bible uses in the above passage is corn, but in Hebrew the actual word refers to barley.  The only reason this is important is, as any Midwestern farmer will tell you, barley does not ripen all at once.  Corn, on the other hand, is pretty much up and done.  Either you get it picked when it’s ready, or the crop is lost.  Barley and wheat ripen over a much longer period.  In the era when Leviticus was written, in a desert land where starvation was a real concern, harvesting took place by hand.  The sheaves were picked only when the barley was fully ripened.

           Why is this important to us in the here and now?  Because the Scriptures mark this period of the harvest as lasting for fifty days.  From the day after the Passover Sabbath, when the first fruits is offered, to the harvest festival, is seven weeks and one day. 

            I can see those folks who know their Gospels well counting frantically on their fingers.  Let me save you the bother.

            The period from Christ’s resurrection to the day of the Holy Spirit’s anointing is exactly the same. 

            Fifty days. 

            The bridge to eternity has been set across the chasm of misdeeds and foul thoughts.  Let us now pass through the gateway to peace, and discover what awaits us within God’s realm.

            The season of change is upon us still.

The Prayer of Challenge

           The twenty-third chapter of Leviticus contains eight festivals.  These days it is often assumed that God commanded his people to make offerings at the Temple for all eight.  This is incorrect.  In fact, the heads of households were required to present themselves only three times—for Passover, for Shavuot, and for the autumn harvest.  For the others, the Lord’s people were called to observe the festival, but to do so wherever they were. 

           There was a national observance on the first day of the harvest period.  The leading priest of every community would go out into the barley fields.  He sought out the best, and he harvested it.  He then waved it over the gathered people.  Why?  This waving of the sheaf was a symbol of victory.  Just as the people had succeeded in bringing forth a life-giving harvest from the land God had given them, so too would God gather his divine harvest, his people, back into his fold. 

           The traditional prayer spoken by the community priest remains the same today as it would have been in Jesus’ day.  Words uttered for over two thousand years, a litany of promise and of challenge:  “May the rest of the harvest be just like the first fruit.”

            Paul tells us that the Messiah is the first fruits.  So the hope, the promise, the victory, lies in our living up to the words of this prayer.  That we will be transformed during this harvest season.  That we will be brought to full fruition, so that his work on earth continues in us.

            For this to happen, we must willingly enter our own season of divine change.

The Period of Omer

            This fifty day period, from the festival of first fruits to the Shavuot Festival, is known as Omer, which is the Hebrew word for sheaf.  The first day of Omer, the day when the wave offering is made, is a day of newness.  As we have already seen, nothing from that season’s harvest can be eaten until after the wave offering is made and the priest prays over the fields and the people.  Why is this important? 

            Left to ourselves, we tend to make ourselves pisul, which is the Hebrew term for unacceptable to God.  Remember what we studied earlier.  These festivals were intended as times of divine renewal. 

            The first day of Omer is referred to as a time of newness because everything that was forbidden suddenly has a change in status.  That which was forbidden or excluded becomes mutar, or permissible.  It is now a welcome component of God’s holy kingdom.  A part of the divine plan.

            Thus it is clear why God chose this specific day to raise his Son from the dead.  We too become mutar, welcome to enter the Kingdom and become part of the divine harvest.

            We have been redeemed. 

Count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath on which you bring your sheaf of corn to present to the Lord.  On the fiftieth day, the day after the seventh Sabbath, present to the Lord another new offering of corn.

                        Leviticus 23:  15, 16

            The number fifty has a very special significance in Jewish law.  Each half-century is marked by a Year of Jubilee, when everything goes back to its original owner.  Through this, the number fifty signifies redemption. 

            Yet remember what we said earlier about the root word for redemption, which in fact means ownership.  The number fifty has nothing to do with liberation.  It does not mean being granted freedom to do whatever we want.  Fifty signifies being released from shackles of slavery, in order to perform a certain purpose.

            This concept carries a vital importance for us in the here and now.  As we chart the course of divine change within ourselves, we will discover that God does not release us from the chains of today’s world so that we can take on whatever job or goal we choose.  Each step of our change, our liberation, should also be another step we take in moving closer to God’s divine will, wisdom, light, love…

            And destiny.

            This is what makes the difference between change on a human level, and change for God’s purpose.

I always remember you in my prayers, asking the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, to give you a spirit of wisdom and revelation so that you will know him better.  I pray also that you will have greater understanding in your heart so you will know the hope to which he has called us and that you will know how rich and glorious are the blessings God has promised his holy people.

                        Ephesians 1:15-18

            In synagogues still today, the rabbi will count down the fifty days from the first of Omer to the feast of Shavuot, the harvest festival.  God intended this counting as a reminder that the harvest extends over a period.  He is referring not merely to the harvest of grains, but the human harvest. 

            Our growth into living instruments of God’s holy will is not a one-time experience.  The work begins with the moment of redemption, when that which was forbidden becomes accepted.  But this is only the start of the process.  God ordered these days to be counted so that we would be called to recognize that our own process of harvest begins with redemption and goes on from there.

           Are we saved at the moment of confession and redemption?  Of course.  But our process of becoming part of God’s harvest only starts at that miraculous instant. 

           Our churches are filled with hungry hearts, people dissatisfied with their level of connection to our Lord.  We thirst after more, and yet we remain dissatisfied.  We blame the minister, we blame the church.  We blame the infighting, the human dimension, the absence of this or that. 

           We blame everything and everybody but ourselves.

            Desiring change is not enough.  We cannot reach out and take hold of what God offers without first making that one intensely challenging step.

            Letting go.

            So long as we maintain our two-fisted hold upon whatever it is in our lives that remains out of synch with God’s divine plan, we are shackled to the spot where we stand.  Dissatisfied, yearning, critical, wanting more and yet terrified of doing what we must in order to move forward.

           Letting go.

           Entering the season of divine change means that we must first move from where we are.  And there is only one way of doing so.  By understanding that God calls us not merely to freedom, but rather to freedom in Him. 

           Our redemption is not a liberty to remain isolated and independent.  That is our own willful nature at work, redefining the world in a manner as perverse as the Pharisees.

           Remember what we studied earlier about God’s concept of liberty.  God frees us from the prison of sin through the act of eternal sacrifice.  This liberty has granted us eternal freedom.  And something more.  Something vital.

           To fulfill God’s purpose in us, to bring ourselves to the full harvest, we must accept God’s concept of liberty.  Not ours.  God’s.  And what did we say God’s definition of liberty contained? 

           The freedom to live within his purpose for our lives.

The Death, The Burial, The Resurrection, and then…

            In Jewish teaching, some numbers are seen to hold both great significance and a divine message.  Forty is such a number.  The first time this number appears in the Bible is of course the flood, when it rained for forty days and nights.  The sinful generation was cleansed away and the earth renewed.  Humanity was given another chance to start over, to learn from its mistakes and choose to follow God.

           The purpose was not to destroy mankind, but rather to preserve him.  And to do so through the acts of a righteous man, Noah. 

           In the sixth chapter of Genesis, just preceding the flood, we are told twice in the first fourteen verses that the earth was filled with wickedness.  In Hebrew, the word used in both cases is Hamas.  Anyone who follows current politics will know that to be the name of the terrorist group dominating the Gaza Strip.  In Hebrew, the word Hamas means, violence without purpose.  Or, violence for the sake of violence.  At the time of Noah, the world was filled with violence without aim.  And so it rained for forty days and nights. 

           The same thing happened in the desert, when another righteous man, Moses, led the Israelites through their own time of testing and instruction.  After disobeying God at Mount Sinai, the Israelites were left to wander in the desert for forty years.  The time cleansed away the generation of unbelievers, and taught the Israelites to remember their trust in God’s leadership. 

           Thus the number forty signifies a cleansing, a purifying, a removal, so that something better can happen.

           In our case, on the fortieth day of divine harvest, Jesus removed himself.  He ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of God.  Why?  He says so clearly.  So that the Holy Spirit can arrive.  The friend who will remain closer than a brother.   

           We will spend considerable time in a later chapter examining this momentous event in great detail.  What we need to emphasize here is the continuing cycle, the unfolding of events according to God’s divine plan.  Yet again we are shown how important this harvest cycle remains to us today.  Jesus departs, so that the Comforter arrives.  Jesus himself refers to this arrival as, something better.  Does he mean that the Holy Spirit is more powerful?  Of course not.  What he is saying here is that his physical presence, his body, is not the most crucial element.  What could be more glorious that having the Messiah’s own Spirit dwell within us, become so intimately attached to us that he lives in us and through us?

The Festival of Weeks

            So if we allow, if we accept the divine invitation, the forty-nine days of Omer represent a divinely guided process.  The harvest period is also filled with work.  Anyone who has ever lived on a farm knows that harvesting is marked by dusk-to-dawn labor. 

On the fiftieth day, all work stops.  God tells us in Leviticus to treat the fiftieth day as a Sabbath.  On the fiftieth day, the work of harvest is done.  The counting is over.  Man’s efforts are finished.  His attention returns to God. 

In the Jewish calendar, this momentous day is known as Shavuot, the Festival of Weeks.  We know this by the Greek name.

The Day of Pentecost.

So the Festival of Weeks marks the end of the harvest by a divine celebration.  A liberty from the toil of bringing in the crops.  Remember, now, God’s idea of a celebration is not to lay down tools and party.  God’s day of liberty carries a divine purpose.  And that purpose is for man to draw near to His throne, to receive an earthly foretaste of the splendor to come. 

           What a glorious and timely introduction to the Holy Spirit’s gifts.

            According to the Jewish Testament, redemption comes through the Law.  Man is brought into a relationship with God through adherence to the divine commandments.  And what does Jesus say?  Over and over during his time on earth, he reveals how the keepers of this Law have created a stumbling block for God’s people.  And how the people themselves have fallen away. 

           Yet fallen man, now redeemed and made acceptable, is shown the most astonishing foretaste of all.

           God breathes upon the believer’s heart and mind.

           Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments upon the day of the Jewish calendar marked by the Festival of Weeks.  Thus Shavuot is not merely the celebration of the annual spring harvest.  This is the day when God’s messenger presented his people with the Law, the holy covenant through which God’s chosen people, who had been lost to heaven since the fall of Adam, might be brought back into the divine fold.  His people are instructed to take this day to remind themselves of the holy gift of redemption.  God himself inscribed the laws through which man might return to his eternal home.

           But it did not happen.

           Man refused the holy invitation.  The laws were ignored, revoked, twisted.  Man remained set upon the path to darkness. 

           So God built another bridge, this one in the form of a Vessel both human and divine.  The Vessel was shattered on Calgary, but only so the Divine could come to us in a more intimate fashion.  Dwelling within us.  And the day of the Spirit’s arrival was the same day as the harvest celebration.  A perfect and triumphant conclusion to God’s holy season. 

           On Mount Sinai, God wrote the Law on stone.  This time, he has written his will directly upon our hearts. 

           Let us now into our own season of divine change.