The Book of Leviticus

Hebrew Study

Explanation

God calls these "my feasts," His own appointed times. First stands the weekly sabbath: "six days shall work be done: but the seventh day is the sabbath of rest, an holy convocation." Rest comes before every other feast, the foundation of the whole calendar. Then the year opens in the first month with the Passover, "in the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the LORD'S passover," followed at once by the seven-day feast of Unleavened Bread, when no leaven was to be eaten and the first and seventh days were holy convocations with no servile work. Passover remembered the night the destroyer passed over the blood-marked homes in Egypt; Unleavened Bread remembered the haste of the exodus, bread with no time to rise. Redemption by blood, and a clean break from the old life, these are where God's year begins.

Gospel Focus

The feasts open with the two truths at the heart of the gospel. Passover is fulfilled in the cross: "Christ our passover is sacrificed for us" (1 Corinthians 5:7). The lamb slain, the blood applied, the judgment passing over the covered, all of it pointed to Calvary, and Jesus died at Passover, the true Lamb "which taketh away the sin of the world" (John 1:29). Unleavened Bread follows immediately, for redemption is meant to break us clean from the old life. Paul draws the line straight: "purge out therefore the old leaven... let us keep the feast, not with old leaven... but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth" (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). Leaven pictures sin, and the God who redeems us by blood calls us to put away the old corruption. The two feasts stand together: we are saved by the blood of the Lamb, and we are called to walk clean before Him. And under it all lies the sabbath rest, fulfilled in Christ, who says, "come unto me... and I will give you rest" (Matthew 11:28).

Hebrew Study

Explanation

When Israel entered the land and reaped the barley harvest, the very first sheaf was not to be eaten; it was brought to the priest and waved "before the LORD, to be accepted for you." With it went a burnt offering of "an he lamb without blemish," a meat offering, and a drink offering. Until that sheaf was offered, the people were not to eat "neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears" of the new crop. God received the first portion before His people took any for themselves. The offering "on the morrow after the sabbath," the day after the Passover sabbath, made this the feast of the first Sunday of the harvest season, a wave of thanksgiving that the LORD who gave the land was giving its increase.

Gospel Focus

Firstfruits is fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus. Paul names it plainly: "now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (1 Corinthians 15:20). As the first sheaf was waved "on the morrow after the sabbath," so Christ rose on the first day of the week, the day after the sabbath, the true Firstfruits lifted up "accepted for us." And just as the first sheaf was the pledge of the whole harvest, His rising is the pledge of ours: "Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ's at his coming" (1 Corinthians 15:23). He did not rise alone, but as the first of a great harvest of the redeemed. The empty tomb is God's guarantee that death is beaten and the whole field will be raised. Because the Firstfruits has been accepted, all who are His will follow. The barley sheaf waving in the priest's hands was a shadow; the risen Christ is the substance, and He is the firstfruits of a resurrection that will one day gather in all His own.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

From the day of the wave sheaf, Israel was to "count unto you... seven sabbaths," seven full weeks, and on the fiftieth day hold a new feast. This is the feast of Weeks, later called Pentecost, from the Greek word for fiftieth. Now the wheat harvest was in, and the offering was different: "two wave loaves... baken with leaven," the finished bread of the new harvest, waved before the LORD as "the firstfruits unto the LORD." With the loaves went burnt offerings, a sin offering, and peace offerings. And tucked into the law of this feast is a word of mercy: when they reaped, they were not to gather the corners of the field or the gleanings, but to "leave them unto the poor, and to the stranger." The feast of the full harvest was to remember those who had no field of their own.

Gospel Focus

This is the feast that gave its name to the birthday of the church. "When the day of Pentecost was fully come," the believers were "all with one accord in one place," and "they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance" (Acts 2:1-4). Fifty days after the resurrection Firstfruits, God poured out His Spirit, exactly as the calendar foreshadowed. The timing was no accident: the feast that celebrated the gathered harvest became the day God began to gather a people into His church. And mark the detail, the two loaves were "baken with leaven." The firstfruits of Christ's own body were sinless, but the firstfruits of His church are redeemed sinners, people once full of the leaven of sin, now made God's own and presented to Him. That very day about three thousand souls were added (Acts 2:41), the first great sheaf of the gospel harvest. Pentecost is not a relic; it is the promise "unto you, and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call" (Acts 2:39). The same Spirit that fell then is poured out still, and the harvest is not finished.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The autumn feasts open with the feast of Trumpets on the first day of the seventh month, "a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation." The trumpet blast summoned the people and announced the sacred season. Nine days later came the most solemn day of the year, the Day of Atonement, treated fully in Leviticus 16. Here it is set in the calendar: a "day of atonement... an holy convocation," on which the people were to "afflict your souls," to humble themselves in fasting and repentance, and do no work at all. It was so serious that "whatsoever soul it be that shall not be afflicted in that same day, he shall be cut off." A "sabbath of rest," it ran "from even unto even." The people rested from labor and bowed low before God while the high priest carried blood into the most holy place to cleanse the nation of its sins.

Gospel Focus

The trumpet and the Day of Atonement both find their answer in Christ and in the hope of His coming. The Day of Atonement, the day of blood carried into the holiest place, is fulfilled in Jesus, who "by his own blood he entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us" (Hebrews 9:12). What the high priest did once a year, Christ did once for all. The call to "afflict your souls" is the call to genuine repentance, the humble and contrite heart God has always sought, "a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise" (Psalm 51:17). And the trumpet still sounds ahead of us. As Israel was gathered by the trumpet blast, so the Lord will gather His own: "the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised" (1 Corinthians 15:52); "the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God" (1 Thessalonians 4:16). The autumn feasts turn our eyes forward, to the atonement already accomplished and the gathering still to come.

Hebrew Study

Explanation

The last and greatest feast came in the seventh month, after the full harvest was gathered in, "when ye have gathered in the fruit of the land." For seven days Israel kept "the feast of tabernacles," dwelling in booths made of "boughs of goodly trees, branches of palm trees... and willows of the brook," and they were commanded to "rejoice before the LORD your God seven days." It was the most joyful feast of the year, a harvest festival of thanksgiving and a yearly reminder that their fathers had once lived in fragile shelters in the wilderness while God led and kept them. They left their comfortable homes to remember their pilgrim past and to praise the God who had brought them through it into a land of plenty. The year that began with the blood of the Passover ended with the joy of the ingathering.

Gospel Focus

Tabernacles is the feast of God dwelling with His people, and it reaches its heart in Jesus. John writes of the Word made flesh that He "dwelt among us," and the word he uses means He tabernacled, He pitched His tent among us (John 1:14). The God who once led Israel through the wilderness came and dwelt in our midst in the person of Jesus Christ. The booth also frames our present pilgrimage: we live in frail, temporary bodies, "our earthly house of this tabernacle," looking for "a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens" (2 Corinthians 5:1). And the feast points to the final ingathering, when the harvest is fully home and God's dwelling with His people is complete: "the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them... and God himself shall be with them, and be their God" (Revelation 21:3). The whole calendar has been moving toward this joy. It began with a lamb's blood and ends with God dwelling among a rejoicing people, forever. That is where redemption is headed, and it is why the last feast is the feast of joy.