All right, Leviticus 23. Verses
one and two, let's just read those first two verses. He says,
and the Lord spoke unto Moses saying, speak unto the children
of Israel and say unto them concerning the feast of the Lord. So there's
multiple feasts here. Which you shall proclaim to be
holy convocations. That means these are times of
the year. sometimes it was one day, sometimes it was a week
or whatever, that these, holy meaning they were to be separated.
These are special days that the Lord appointed, holy convocations. There's nothing inherently, you
know, when we think of the word holiness, a lot of times we think
about something that is morally pure. Well, there's nothing morally
pure about these days. What holy means is to be separate
in whatever way the Lord separates us. The people of God are called
holy people, not because they're better than everybody else. Remember,
there's that verse, I can't remember where it is, I didn't mark it
here. Don't be like those who say, I'm holier than thou. I'm
no better than anybody in this world. My salvation is by grace
forever and ever. If God saved me, it's by grace.
It's a free gift that I haven't earned and don't deserve even
now. We understand it's based upon righteousness, but not mine.
It's the righteousness of Christ. So when we see this word of holy,
holy convocations, these are holy times. These are times that
are to be separated out and proclaim special for the purpose that
God's given it. And he said, even these are my
feast. And so he says in verse three,
he says, I didn't put verse three in your lesson there, it should
be Leviticus 23, one through three, I messed up there. So
you know that I'm not perfect, okay? So it's 23, one, two, three,
one through three. And the reason I put that there
is this, six days shall work be done, But the seventh day
is the Sabbath of rest. Now that day was to be set apart,
no work to be done. And holy convocation, this was
a day that was to be separated out for this purpose. You shall
do no work therein. It is the Sabbath of the Lord
in all your dwelling. So now under the old covenant,
as I said, the Lord God required Israel to keep seven feasts. And that number seven is significant,
isn't it, in the Bible. The number seven represents a
finished work. Work six days, on the seventh
day, no work. The work's done, see, on the
seventh day. That's the work's done. And of
course, our Sabbath today is not a day. Sunday's not the Sabbath.
Sunday's the Lord's day that we meet to worship. The Sabbath
for us today is Christ. Read Hebrews chapter four. on
that, and we'll see something else on that in just a moment.
But Christ said, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy
laden, and I'll give you rest. Rest from your labors. What does
that mean? It means we don't have to work our way to salvation.
We can't do it anyway. Those who try to work their way
into God's favor and salvation to make themselves righteousness,
they're doing something that is an impossibility. By deeds
of law shall no flesh be justified. That means by deeds of law shall
no flesh be forgiven, and by deeds of law shall no flesh be
declared righteous in God's sight. So where is our Sabbath? Where
is our righteousness? Where is our forgiveness? It's
in Christ, the blood of Christ, His work, His righteousness,
you see. And that's what that Sabbath
indicated. So each feast that he's going
to be talking about was typical of our Lord Jesus Christ and
the salvation of his people. And each one of them, and God,
he begins the commandments for these feasts with a reminder
of the Sabbath. And I believe what he's doing
here is he's showing that in keeping these feasts, you're
not doing it in order to be saved. You're not doing it in order
to make yourself righteous before God. Because understand the Sabbath
rest is connected with every one of these feasts. And so when
you keep these feasts, understand what they're for. They're not
works that you do for salvation. They are typical. They are prophetic. They are foreshadowings, pictures
of the rest that we have in Christ. for all of our salvation. And
you know the Sabbath was the sign of the old covenant, and
I've got that marked in your lesson here in Exodus 31, 12
through 18. So it was a sign. And that's
amazing because the old covenant was a works covenant. And it
was given to the nation Israel to show them the impossibility
of salvation by their works. Isn't that amazing? That's the
wisdom of God. It was given to show them their sinfulness and
their depravity and their need of a greater covenant, the covenant
of grace, their need of Christ. And the Sabbath rest was the
sign of that covenant. And what he's showing there is
look, there's no rest under a works salvation. There's no rest. That's
why any church that preaches salvation in any way, to some
degree, in any way, at any stage, by works, there's never any spiritual
rest. It's always a burden. But we
rest in Christ. Now, does that mean that we don't
obey Him? No, it doesn't mean that at all.
It means that our obedience is based upon the rest that He's
given us by His grace. We're not working for our salvation.
we work for the glory of God, out of grace and love and gratitude. Well, each feast was associated
with a Sabbath of observance, and that typified that rest.
And salvation was and is all of grace, based upon the work
of Christ, the finished work of Christ, as our surety, our
substitute, our redeemer. Now, under the new covenant,
we are not bound to keep these feasts. Now there's some people
who claim that we are, but over in Colossians chapter two, and
there's several scriptures that I could go to to show you this.
We're not bound to keep these feasts on a yearly basis each
day at the times of the year that God appointed. There were
specific times that Israel under the old covenant was to do this. But over in the New Testament,
when all of these things had been abolished by way of fulfillment
in Christ, There were always Jewish unbelieving legalists
who claimed to be Christian who would infiltrate the Gentile
churches and try to put them under the burden of the law.
For example, for the males to be circumcised and to be under
the law of Moses and to keep days and weeks and all of that.
And the New Testament is clear that that's going back to the
law. That's a denial of Christ, and so in Colossians, for example,
in Colossians that was happening, and in Colossians chapter two
and verse 16, listen to what the apostle Paul writes here
as inspired by the Holy Spirit. He says, let no man therefore
judge you in meat, or in meals, what you eat, or in drink, what
you drink. In other words, he's talking
about the ceremonial law here now. Let no man judge you in
respect of an holy day or of the new moon or of the Sabbath
days. Don't let anybody judge you according
to those things, he says. He says in verse 17, these things
are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Those
things were foreshadowings of the coming of Christ. So we don't
keep those days, but spiritually speaking, We do keep those days
when we celebrate Christ, when we look to and rest in Christ,
when we applaud Him, worship Him. That's what we're doing
right now. If you're a believer in Christ, you're keeping these
feasts spiritually. And somebody said, well, you're
just trying to spiritualize the scripture. Well, let me tell
you something. If you don't, if there's no spiritual significance
of these things, What good are they gonna do us? If this is all of the earth,
which is gonna perish, what good's that gonna do us? You bet there's
a spiritual meaning here. There's an eternal application
here. And let's just look at them. I won't read all these
scriptures, but just go over. All right, from Leviticus 23,
four through five, the first feast is the Passover. Now, we've
studied the Passover when we went through the book of Exodus.
in these messages on Christ in the Old Testament. And you know
about the Passover. It reaches back when God was
preparing Israel, the Hebrew children, to come out of Egypt. And you remember the 10 plagues,
and then the final plague was the plague of the death of the
firstborn, and the Lord gave Israel the remedy, which was
the blood of a spotless lamb. And he told them to put the blood
on their doorpost and all of that. And he said, when I see
the blood, I will pass over you. Now, there was a physical, physical
application to the nation Israel. But there's a spiritual application
to spiritual Israel, God's people, Jew and Gentile who believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ. All of that pictured the grace
and the power and the glory of God to bring Israel out from
the bondage of Egypt. Spiritually speaking, we are
all naturally in the bondage of sin and death. And we have
to be delivered out of that bondage. Well, how are we gonna be delivered?
By our works? No. By our dedication? No. By our sincerity? No. Does that mean that we shouldn't
be people who work? No, we should be. Does that mean
we shouldn't be dedicated and sincere? No, we should be. But
that's not gonna deliver us out of the bondage of sin and death.
The wages of sin is death. Gift of God is eternal life through
Jesus Christ our Lord. As sin hath reigned unto death,
even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
by Jesus Christ our Lord. So we celebrate the Passover
as we look to Christ, who is our Passover lamb. He's the lamb
of God, which bears away the sins of the world, the sins of
his people all over this world. And you can go back and read
about the Passover in Exodus 12 through 14. But that's the
significance that Christ is our Passover. Christ is our righteousness
before God. Paul said that explicitly in
the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 5 and verse 7. He said Christ
is our Passover. And so we're not redeemed with
corruptible things, we're redeemed with the blood of Christ. That's
what the Passover feast represented. Now Israel was to keep that feast
literally every year. That was the first feast of the
year they were to keep, is the Passover. Representing the ground
of salvation, the blood of the Lamb of God, the blood of Christ. Leviticus 23, beginning at verse
six through verse eight, we have the feast of unleavened bread.
Look at that, verse six. And on the 15th day of the same
month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord. Seven days
you must eat unleavened bread. Now that was a continuation of
the Passover. You remember, I think it was
five days before the Passover, they were to remove all leaven
from their houses. Leaven in the Bible, most of
the time that it's used, not always, leaven represents, symbolizes
sin. Remember Christ said, a little
leaven leaveneth the whole lump. If you make bread, you put a
little leaven in there and it spreads throughout the whole
lump of dough. And he said that's representative
of sin, how bad it is. Sin is like a disease. A little of it spreads a long
way. Christ used leaven to represent the false doctrine of the Pharisees
to his disciples. He said, he told them, he said,
beware of the leaven of the scribes and the Pharisees. That leaven
was their false doctrine, which was like poison. And so leaven
oftentimes represents false doctrine and sin. Well, the Feast of Unleavened
Bread that followed in continuation of the Passover, they were to
keep a Sabbath, they were to eat unleavened bread along with
bringing an offering made by fire unto the Lord in that feast.
And the Passover typified the ground of salvation by the blood
of Christ. The Feast of Unleavened Bread
represented the results of salvation. First of all, it typified the
sinlessness of Christ himself. When he died on the cross, why
did he die? For the sins of his people charged
to his account. He came under the debt of my
sins. And he suffered the wrath of
God for my sins. And when he died, those sins
were purged away. They were gone. He took them
away. The Bible says, and then also,
for the people of God, in Christ, our sins are taken away. Now
that doesn't mean that we're sinless in this life. We're still
sinners saved by grace. But what that means is that God
does not charge us with our sins. The Bible says in Romans chapter
eight, verse 33, who shall lay anything to the charge of God's
elect? It's God that justifies. Who
can't condemn us? It's Christ that died. We can't
be condemned. Why? Because we're such good
people? No. Should we try to be better
people? Yes. But we're not condemned,
not because of that. We're not condemned because of
the blood of Christ. Because of the perfect blood
of Christ. Hebrews 10, 14, I think, speaks of this in an application. of this Feast of Unleavened Bread,
which says, for by one offering, he, Christ, hath perfected forever
them that are sanctified. And that's what that is. We can
boast of a sinlessness, but not in ourselves. We still have sinful
thoughts, do sinful things, even as believers, don't we? Paul
said, oh wretched man that I am, Who shall deliver me from this
body of death? But we can, even as sinners,
sinners saved by grace in ourselves, we can boast of an unleavened
state, a sinlessness. How? Based upon Christ bearing
our sins away legally. They cannot be charged as God
said, I'll remember them no more. and based upon his righteousness
imputed to us, charged to us. I have a righteousness that is
sinlessly perfect, that cannot be contaminated, cannot be taken
away. It's the righteousness of Christ
that is imputed, charged, accounted to me by God through his grace. Grace reigns through righteousness
unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. Beginning at verse
nine, we have the next feast, the Feast of Firstfruits. Look
at verse nine, he says, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak
unto the children of Israel, saying to them, when you be come
into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest
thereof, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of
your harvest unto the priest. He shall wave the sheaf, that
means he'll lift the sheaf of this harvest, it was a barley
harvest is what it was. And he would lift the sheaf of
this harvest and he would wave it unto the Lord. And he shall
wave the sheaf before the Lord to be accepted for you on the
morrow after the Sabbath, the priest shall wave it. And he
goes on. Well, the feast of first fruits,
that was during the barley harvest in Israel. And the people were
to bring the first fruits of the harvest and offer it to the
Lord in recognition that all of this harvest, All of this
good grain, all of this life-giving sustenance in that grain, it's
all of God. It's not because we created it
or did it, it's all of God. You know, I've often told you
about, you know, you go out and you work hard, you make your living, get your paycheck, Build up a
savings, you buy your home, you go through life, and you've accumulated
all of this stuff. And you know that if you hadn't
done that, it wouldn't be there, if you hadn't worked hard. But
here's the point. After it's all said and done,
you know where it all came from? Came from the Lord. You say,
well, I worked hard. Well, it's the Lord who put you
in a position to have a good job and to have the ability and
the thought and the mind to do that. Not everybody has that
same opportunity, do they? How many times have I told you,
take the next breath. That's a gift from God for you.
And that's what this Feast of Firstfruits represents, that
our salvation is the fruit of God's power and goodness and
grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's not something that we can
brag about that we did in our power or by our will or by our
goodness or by some decision we made. It's all of God. And it comes forth from Christ
who is called the first fruits. The Feast of Firstfruits celebrates
Christ as the firstfruits of his people. Look over in 1 Corinthians
15. And let me say this, I've got
referenced in your lesson here, John chapter 12, where Christ
is speaking of his death. And here's how he puts it. Now
you look at 1 Corinthians 15, but here's how he puts it. He
says, if a corn of wheat or a seed of wheat falls into the ground,
unless it falls into the ground and dies, it will not bear fruit. But if it falls into the ground
and dies, it'll bear much fruit. And he goes on and says in John
12, he's speaking of the death that he should die. And what
he's saying there is out of his death, that seed of his death,
being planted as a seed in death, comes the fruit of the salvation
of his people. And 1 Corinthians 15, beginning
at verse 20 there, is speaking of the resurrection of the dead. And what he's saying here is
that the resurrection of the dead is the product, the fruit,
the result of the death of Christ, the death, burial, and resurrection
of Christ. Look at verse 20. But now is Christ risen from
the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept. For
since by man came death, that's Adam, by man came also the resurrection
of the dead, that's Christ, and for as in Adam all die, as in
all who are in Adam die. How do you know if you're in
Adam or you're in Christ? Do you believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ? All who believe in him are in him. They were in him
before the foundation of the world when God chose us and gave
us to him. They were in Him at the cross
when He died for our sins and put them away and was buried
and rose again the third day. So even so, in Christ shall all
be made alive, but every man in his own order, Christ the
firstfruits. There's the ground of it, there's
the cause of it, there's the power of it. Afterward, they
that are Christ at His coming. There's the result of it. You
see that? I think that's one of the biggest
problems today about people in what they call Christianity.
They've got the cart before the horse. They've got the fruits
where the ground ought to be and the ground where the fruits
ought to be. And they make salvation conditioned on themselves rather
than on Christ alone. All salvation's conditioned on
Christ and he fulfilled those conditions and all for whom he
died will be raised again. They'll be born again, raised
again. And so this is what the Feast
of Firstfruits pointed to. That all for whom Christ died
shall be saved. Now look, here's the next one,
the Feast of Weeks. This is in verse 15. The Feast
of Weeks. This is the feast that sometimes
is called the Feast of Pentecost. Because it was held 50 days. The word Pentecost means 50.
It was held 50 days, seven weeks and a day, a Sabbath after the
Feast of the Firstfruits, called Pentecost. And it was the wheat
harvest. A Feast of Firstfruits was the
barley harvest. The Feast of Pentecost, or the
Feast of Weeks, was the wheat harvest. And it says in verse
15, and you shall count unto you from the morrow after the
Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave
offering, seven Sabbaths shall be complete. And even unto the
morrow after the seventh Sabbath shall you number 50 days, and
you shall offer a new meat or meal offering unto the Lord. Now listen to this, verse 17,
this is a, you remember how the feast of first fruits, the barley
harvest, was to be offered in a sheaf? And that represents
the oneness, it was all bound together. We're in Christ, his
people, one in the eyes of God's law and justice. But he says
in verse 17, you shall bring out of your habitations two wave
loaves of two tenths. Now the Feast of Weeks, the wheat
was to be offered not in a sheaf, but in two loaves. And notice
also, they shall be of fine flour, they shall be bacon with leaven. These are not unleavened loaves.
There's leaven in them. They are the first fruits unto
the Lord. and you offer him with a lamb, seven lambs without blemish
of the first year. So what's he talking about in
this Feast of Weeks? Well, the Feast of Weeks, the
Feast of Pentecost, represents the harvest of all sinners saved
by grace that come out of what Christ accomplished for his people.
And what are we? Some say two loaves. Why two
loaves? There are different views of
that by different commentators. Some people say that that represents
God's people, Jew and Gentile. It may be. Some say it represents
the Old Testament and the New Testament. God's elect in the
Old Testament, God's elect in the New Testament. I know this,
the number two in the Bible is the number of witness, and when
God brings us to salvation as sinners saved by grace, what
are we? We're the witnesses of Christ.
So it may be that. But don't get bogged down in
those details. Listen to this. What does that represent? The
Feast of Weeks. It's the harvest of God's people
being brought out of the state of sin and death into a state
of spirit and life. And that's what happened at Pentecost. What happened at Pentecost, Acts
chapter two? It was prophesied by Joel The book of Joel, the
prophet Joel over in Joel chapter two. And then it was fulfilled
in Acts chapter two. What happened? Peter preached
the gospel and 3,000 souls were brought to Christ by the power
of God. That's what this represents.
God's elect gathered from the four corners of the earth. Jew
and Gentile unto Christ. In the Passover, We saw the sacrificial
death of Christ, the Lamb of God, the ground of salvation.
And in the sheaf of first fruits, we see the resurrection, ascension,
and acceptance of Christ as our sin-atoning substitute, which
is the guarantee of our resurrection into life. And now in the Feast
of Pentecost, we see the outpouring of the Holy Spirit to gather
us in unto himself. And you can read all this in
your lesson, but that's what that means. And look at the next
one, the Feast of Trumpets. Look at verse 23. He says in
verse 23, he says, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, speak unto
the children of Israel, saying, in the seventh month, in the
first day of the month, shall you have a Sabbath, a memorial
of blowing trumpets and holy convocation. You shall do no
servile work, but you shall offer an offering made by fire unto
the Lord. There's the Feast of Trumpets. Well, what does a trumpet
do? It's an announcement. It's a
pronouncement. This was held in the fall of
the year. No work was to be done. Burnt offerings, a sin offering,
would be brought before the Lord. And the trumpets would call the
people to do what? Stop working and bring your offerings. Well, what's that occult? That's
the gospel. The gospel call is the trumpet
call for us. Stop trying to save yourself
by your works and come to Christ. Rest in Christ. Submit to His
blood and His righteousness. That's what that is. The gospel
is the power of God unto salvation. To everyone that believeth, to
the Jew first, to the Greek also, for therein is the righteousness
of God revealed. From faith to faith, as it is
written, the just shall live by faith. This gospel, it proclaims
the sound of the glorious person of Christ. Who is Jesus Christ?
He's God, manifest in the flesh. It proclaims the glorious work
of Christ, the finished work, it's done. You have no righteousness,
I have no righteousness, but Christ brought in one, and now
I'm in him. And that's what the Feast of
Trumpets. In verse 26 we have the next one, the Day of Atonement.
We studied that last week when we talked about the greatest
day of the year in Lesson 38. It was back there in Leviticus
16. And in verse 26 he talks about
the Day of Atonement. That was the most important feast
because that was the one time of the year that the high priest
would go into the holiest of all. with the blood of the lamb
and sprinkled upon the mercy seat, obviously a type of Christ,
and I've already gone through that, so I won't spend a whole
lot of time there, but that's certainly the way our sins are
purged away, by the blood of Christ. The way righteousness
is established by the blood of Christ, by his one offering. He perfected forever them that
are sanctified. And then lastly, beginning at
verse 33 and going to the end of the chapter is the Feast of
Tabernacles. Sometimes that's called the Feast
of Booths or Tents. And that feast was a reminder
to the children of Israel how they dwelt in the wilderness
and how God brought them out of the wilderness. They would
have been destroyed. And I think the spiritual application
of this is we think about Christ himself, who came, the word of
God, who came and tabernacled among us in a fleshly tent without
sin, a tabernacle, and how he came into the tabernacle of the
tent of this wilderness that we're in, this world, and by
His death on the cross delivered us from sin and saves us and
keeps us and brings us out of that wilderness into the promised
land, which is salvation by His grace. That's what the Feast
of Tabernacles represents. They were probably keeping this
feast in John chapter seven And when they finished it, Christ
stood up and told the crowd, he said, if any man thirst, let
him come after me. Go through your religious rituals.
They won't quench your thirst unless you know how these point
to Christ who is the water of life. These are celebrations
of Christ. They're not just religious activities. Now most of the Jews under the
old covenant, they didn't see that they were celebrations of
the promised Messiah. They looked at him as just things
you do religiously, try to make yourself acceptable to God. One other thing, and I'll quit.
He mentions the eighth day in this one, in verse 36. The eighth
day in the Bible is a time of new beginnings. And after this feast was finished
on the eighth day, it was a new beginning for the people. Well,
when is that new beginning for us here on this wilderness? When
we're born again. When we're circumcised in heart,
that's our new beginning. That's the first day after the
seventh day. That's the first day after the
finished work, the new beginning that we have. Okay.