Every Feast of Israel Explained: The Prophetic Calendar God Built Around Jesus

Every Feast of Israel Explained: The Prophetic Calendar God Built Around Jesus.

There are seven feasts on God’s calendar, but the Hebrew word behind feast doesn’t mean celebration. It’s the word mo’ed, a mandatory appointment, a scheduled encounter between God and a human being. And here is why that matters to you personally. Four of those appointments have already been kept on the exact calendar days in the exact order 15 centuries after God prescribed them. Jesus died on Passover. He lay in the tomb during the feast of unleavened bread. >> [music] >> He rose on first fruits. The spirit was poured out on Pentecost. Four appointments, four fulfillments, >> [music] >> exact days, exact order. Three appointments remain, and between the fourth and the fifth, in the silence between Pentecost [music] and trumpets, is where you are standing right now. By the end of this video, you won’t [music] just know what these seven appointments are. You’ll know which one you’re standing inside >> [music] >> and why it hasn’t ended yet. Before we go feast by feast, there’s something in Leviticus 23 [music] that reframes everything that follows. Verse two does not say, “These are the feasts of Israel.” It says, “These [music] are the appointed feasts of the Lord.” God set the dates. God loaded them [music] with content that would take centuries to understand. And mo’ed, the word behind every [music] feast, is the same word used for the tent of meeting, the ohel mo’ed, the place where God scheduled face time with Moses. Every feast on this calendar is that kind of meeting, not a holiday, a meeting. The feasts fall into two groups. The spring feasts [music] were fulfilled at Jesus’ first coming. The fall feasts point toward his second. And the last feast on the calendar, the one where God stopped scheduling because he never leaves, is what the entire calendar has been building toward. [music] The first appointment was set for Nisan 14, the 14th day of the first month, >> [music] >> and it began with a lamb the night God delivered Israel from Egypt. Every household was told to take a lamb without blemish and sacrifice it at twilight. The blood was painted on the doorposts and the lintel. [music] And when the angel of death moved through Egypt, every home marked with blood was spared. And here is [music] the detail hiding in the Hebrew. The English says God passed over those homes. But the Hebrew verb pesach doesn’t necessarily mean to skip. The same verb appears in Isaiah 31:5 where God protects Jerusalem. And some scholars read pesach not as passing over, but as standing guard over. The angel didn’t skip the house. God stood at the door. >> [music] >> That changes the picture completely. This is a God who sees the blood, plants himself at the threshold, and doesn’t move until the danger has passed. The first appointment [music] wasn’t a transaction. It was a guard post. And the specifications for the lamb were doing something else entirely without blemish. Bones not broken. Blood that brought protection. Those weren’t instructions for a one-time ceremony. They were a portrait of someone who hadn’t arrived yet. John 19:36 notes that when the soldiers came to break Jesus’s legs, they found he was already dead and didn’t break them. The Passover requirement fulfilled to the biological detail. And the timing. Jesus was crucified on Nisan 14. [music] The exact day Israel had been sacrificing lambs for 1,500 years. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians [music] 5:7 Christ our Passover lamb has been sacrificed. Christ is the lamb, the [music] reality to which every sacrifice for 15 centuries was pointing. And there’s a detail most people miss. Four days earlier Exodus 12:3 [music] says the lamb was selected on Nisan 10 and brought into the household. Examined for four days before the sacrifice. [music] Jesus entered Jerusalem on Nisan 10, the triumphal entry. For the next [music] four days, he was questioned by the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Herodians examined. And on the 14th, the lamb found without blemish was sacrificed. The selection ritual [music] is playing out in real time. Every time you take communion, every time you break the bread and lift the cup, you are keeping this appointment. You’ve been observing Passover your entire life. You just didn’t know it had a Hebrew name. Jesus died on Passover, and the next day, the second feast began. [music] The feast that explains what happened to the body. The feast of unleavened bread began the day after Passover and lasted 7 days. Israel removed every trace of leaven from their homes. Every crumb of yeast, every bread that had been allowed to rise. For a full week, they ate only matzah bread without corruption. Leaven in the Bible almost always represents the same thing. [music] The small wrong spreads until it affects everything. Paul uses this exact image [music] in 1 Corinthians 5. A little leaven leavens the whole lump. Most teaching on this feast [music] stops at the overlap. The tomb coincides with the feast. Jesus was sinless. Done. But the feast wasn’t running at the same time as the tomb by accident. The feast was the prophetic [music] description of the tomb, written into Israel’s calendar before there was a body to preserve. Jesus was buried on Nisan 15, the day the feast began, and lay in the tomb during the opening days of the feast. His body did not decay. Peter says it in Acts 2, quoting Psalm 16. You will not let your holy one see corruption. The unleavened body, the one without the leaven of sin, lay in the earth while the feast of uncorrupted bread was running overhead. The calendar didn’t pause between [music] the death and the resurrection. God kept an appointment. And on the day after the Sabbath, >> [music] >> the exact day the priest was waving the first sheaf in the temple courts, the tomb opened. The feast of first fruits was observed on the day after the Sabbath of Passover week. The priest took the first sheaf of the barley harvest and waved it before God. One declaration, more is coming. This is the first, the rest will follow. The Hebrew word bikkurim shares the same root as bekhor, firstborn. The first sheaf and the firstborn son. Same root, same promise. Paul takes it directly into the resurrection. In 1 Corinthians [music] 15:20, Christ the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. The firstborn of a harvest already guaranteed by the ritual that started it. >> [music] >> Jesus rose on the exact day of the Feast of Firstfruits. And the timing is nearly [music] impossible to explain by coincidence. The resurrection didn’t happen on a random Sunday. >> [music] >> It happened on the one day of the year the calendar had designated for celebrating the first of the [music] harvest. While the priest was inside the temple courts lifting the first sheaf toward heaven, outside the city walls on the same morning, the tomb was opening. The priest performing [music] the shadow, the empty tomb fulfilled the substance. The first sheaf was lifted, >> [music] >> the harvest was declared, and 50 days later on the exact day the calendar prescribed, the harvest arrived. 50 days after Firstfruits, Israel observed the Feast of Weeks. The Greek name is Pentecost, 50th. Where Firstfruits celebrated the first sheaf, Pentecost celebrated [music] the full ingathering and the ritual was different. Instead of one sheaf, two loaves of bread were waved before God. And the loaves were leavened. Every other bread offering in the Levitical system was without leaven. But this one had leaven baked in on purpose. And once you see the Hebrew, you can’t unsee it. The word for weeks, Shavuot, shares a root with the word for oath, shevu’a. In Hebrew, seven and oath are the same word. The Feast of Sevens, 7 * 7 days, was was Feast of the Oath, >> [music] >> which means when God poured out the spirit on Pentecost, he wasn’t inaugurating a random moment. He was keeping an oath, and on the day the calendar had reserved for the sealing of the promise, the promise arrived. [music] The disciples were in Jerusalem because Pentecost was a required pilgrimage. The crowd Peter preached to was there for Shavuot, for the harvest. And what happened was the harvest, 3,000 souls added to the church in a single afternoon. The harvest feast fulfilled by the harvest of souls on the day the calendar prescribed. >> [music] >> And the two leavened loaves start to make sense. Jew and Gentile. Imperfection, people brought together before God. He isn’t waiting for perfection. He’s bringing imperfect [music] ones into his presence through the spirit. Every time you’ve felt the spirit move in a room full of imperfect people, in a church where everyone brought their leaven with them, that is Shavuot. The harvest feast is still running. And then, the calendar goes quiet. Four feasts, four fulfillments, each one on the exact calendar day in the exact order written 15 centuries before the events occurred. This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a schedule. And the schedule has three appointments remaining. But before we get to those three, there is something about the space between the fourth appointment and the fifth that changes how you hear everything that follows. Between the spring feasts and the fall feasts, there is a gap of several months. No feasts, no commanded observances, [music] a long summer where nothing is scheduled. Most teaching says one thing about this gap. We are in the summer of God’s calendar. The spring harvest is complete. The fall harvest hasn’t begun, so we [music] wait. But look at the calendar again. The summer isn’t empty. The fourth appointment, Pentecost, was the day the spirit was poured out. And nothing on the calendar has been canceled [music] due to the pouring. Acts 2 wasn’t a moment. It was an opening. The 3,000 added that day weren’t the harvest. They were the first day of it. The gap is Pentecost [music] still running. The fourth appointment hasn’t ended, and you are standing inside of it right now. There’s a woman who drives to work every morning. She listens to worship music on the way in. She teaches Sunday school twice a month, and for 2 years, she has quietly wondered whether God is actually doing anything in her life. >> [music] >> She doesn’t feel a fire. She doesn’t hear a voice. She reads her Bible and closes it, and drives to work, and comes home, and does it all again. She doesn’t know it, but she is standing inside a moed. The fourth appointment hasn’t ended. The harvest is [music] still being gathered, and she is part of it. But, this raises a question the calendar doesn’t let you ignore. If the fourth appointment is still running, >> [music] >> what will end it? What is the signal that closes this moed and opens the final three? And when those three arrive, are they warnings, or are they something else? Because the Hebrew word for what’s [music] coming isn’t trumpet, and the three fall feasts aren’t designed to catch you off guard. They are designed to bring you home. The fifth appointment is set for Tishri 1, the first day of the seventh month, >> [music] >> and the command is short. Blow the trumpets. No elaborate ritual. No explanation given. Just blow. And here is where the English fails. The Hebrew word isn’t trumpet. It’s teruah, a war cry, an alarm. When Joshua’s army circled Jericho and the walls came down, the sound was a teruah. It wasn’t music. It was a signal that the situation was about to change. God didn’t schedule Tishri 1 for a concert. He scheduled it for an alarm, the announcement that the most solemn appointment on the calendar was 10 days away. And the New Testament takes this exact language and applies it to one event. Paul writes to the Thessalonians, “The Lord himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God.” The same language echoes in 1 Corinthians 15, >> [music] >> “The last trumpet.” And in Matthew 24, “A loud trumpet call to gather the elect from the four winds.” The fifth appointment points to the teruah that closes the fourth, the alarm that ends the long harvest, and announces that the final work is about to begin. The alarm sounds, and exactly [music] 10 days later the most solemn appointment on the entire calendar arrives, Tishri 10, the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. >> [music] >> And unlike every other feast, this one wasn’t celebrated. It was fasted through. No food, no work, no noise. Every household waited for one man to do one thing, the high priest. Once per year, on this one day, entered the most [music] holy place, the inner sanctuary behind the veil, the room where God’s presence dwelt. Two goats were [music] selected. One was sacrificed, its blood carried behind the veil, and [music] sprinkled on the mercy seat. The other, the scapegoat, had the sins of the nation transferred onto its head and was led into the wilderness. And then the community waited. Because until the priest emerged and declared the atonement complete, no one knew whether the offering had been accepted. The Hebrew word for atonement is kaphar, and kaphar doesn’t [music] mean to erase, it means to cover. When Noah sealed the ark with pitch, the word used is kaphar, to place a covering over something so completely >> [music] >> that what’s underneath is no longer visible. The mercy seat was the lid of the ark. Inside were the tablets of the law, the covenant Israel had broken. When the high priest sprinkled blood on the mercy seat, he was placing kaphar over the broken law. God looked at the mercy seat [music] and saw the blood, not erasure, covering. And rabbinic tradition records something worth noting about how Israel knew the atonement was accepted. A scarlet thread [music] was tied to the scapegoat and to the temple door. When the atonement was received, the thread would turn white, tied to a promise [music] in Isaiah 1 through 18. The Talmud records that the thread stopped turning white approximately 40 years before the temple was destroyed, around 30 AD, >> [music] >> the generation of the crucifixion. That is tradition, not scripture. But it is a historical correspondence that sits in a remarkable place on the timeline because the book of Hebrews takes the entire Day of Atonement and does something unmistakable with it. Hebrews 9 says, “Christ entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats, but by his own blood, >> [music] >> securing eternal redemption. Jesus is the high priest. The heavenly sanctuary is real. And what the Day of Atonement pictured with two goats and a veil, Jesus fulfilled with his own blood in the sanctuary above. But here is the part that matters for the calendar. The Day of Atonement was never fulfilled when the priest entered. It was fulfilled when the priest emerged, when he stepped out from behind the veil and the community knew the atonement had been accepted. Hebrews describes [music] Christ as having entered the heavenly sanctuary. It does not describe him as having emerged. The priestly work is happening, but the appointment, the calendrical fulfillment, the kind that happened on exact days for the first four feasts, has not yet [music] been completed. It will be complete when he steps out. And that hasn’t happened yet. >> [music] >> The alarm sounded. The high priest entered. And when he emerges, when the atonement is declared complete, [music] the calendar has one appointment left, the one the entire calendar has been pointing toward. The seventh appointment is set for Tishrei 15, 5 days after Yom Kippur. [music] And unlike every other feast, after the alarm and the fast and the covering, >> [music] >> this one was pure joy. For 7 days, Israel left their homes >> [music] >> and lived in temporary shelters made from branches and leaves. Roofs open enough to see the stars. Walls thin enough to hear the night. The shelter had a Hebrew name, sukkah, a temporary covering. They were remembering the 40 years when God moved with Israel in the wilderness. [music] When his presence traveled in a tent. When the nation lived under a covering that moved when God moved and stayed when God stayed. God dwelling with his people. In the same camp, breathing the same air. And here is what changes [music] when you see this. The last book of the Bible uses the exact language of the last [music] feast. Revelation 21:3 says God’s dwelling place is now among the people and he will dwell [music] with them. The Greek word is skene, tabernacle. The same word the Greek Old Testament [music] used every time it translated God’s dwelling among his people. The last feast [music] and the last chapter of the Bible speak the same language. But Sukkot in the first century did something Leviticus [music] never described. Two ceremonies were added by the time of Jesus. Both recorded in the Mishnah. And both explain why Jesus said what he said in John 7 and John 8. The first was the water libation. Every morning of Sukkot, priests walked from the temple down to the pool of Siloam, drew water in a golden pitcher, carried it back to the [music] altar, and poured it out while the choir sang Isaiah 12. With joy you will draw water from the wells of [music] salvation. Seven days of water were poured on the altar. And on the last and greatest day, while the water was being poured, John 7:37 says, “Jesus stood up [music] and shouted, ‘If anyone is thirsty, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'” He said it while water was being poured. He was standing in the middle of a rehearsal for himself. The second ceremony was the lighting. Every night of Sukkot, >> [music] >> four enormous menorahs were lit in the court of the women. So tall that the Mishna records that every courtyard in Jerusalem was illuminated. And on the morning after those menorahs [music] had burned all night, John 8:12 records that Jesus said, “I am the light of the world.” He wasn’t reaching for a metaphor. He was standing in the afterglow of a feast that had lit up the city for seven nights, telling them the source had a name. The water pointed to [music] him. The light pointed to him. The shelter pointed to him. The last feast has been rehearsing the moment when God stops needing shelters >> [music] >> because he never leaves. Now, step back and look at the whole calendar. God scheduled seven appointments 15 centuries before the fulfillments began. He kept the first four on the exact days [music] in the exact order. The fifth, the alarm, hasn’t sounded yet. The sixth, the high priest has entered, and when he emerges, [music] that appointment will be complete. The seventh, the moment God moves in permanently, >> [music] >> is the reason the calendar exists. You have been standing inside the fourth appointment this entire time. The spirit that was poured out hasn’t been withdrawn. The harvest that started [music] with 3,000 souls hasn’t been finished. The mode is still open, and every prayer prayed [music] this morning, every hymn sung in a half-empty room, every whispered God, “I don’t know if you can hear me,” is being heard inside an appointment God scheduled before Israel had a calendar to keep it on. If you’ve been sitting in church wondering whether the silence means the calendar stopped, it didn’t stop. If you’ve been reading Revelation with dread instead of anticipation, if the fall feasts sound like threats instead [music] of promises, look at the calendar one more time. The God who kept four appointments to of did not design the last three to catch you off guard. He designed them to bring you home. The mo’ed is not felt. The mo’ed is kept. And you have been keeping it your whole life. If you know someone who has been reading the Old Testament [music] feasts as ancient history instead of a calendar they are standing inside, send this to them. We’ve already gone deep on Daniel’s 70 weeks and the prophecy that predicted the exact year the Messiah would arrive. That video connects [music] directly to the calendar you just saw. Seven feasts, one calendar, one oath. And the God who kept four appointments to the day has not changed his schedule.