Biblical Feasts: Symbolism and Fulfillment

SPEAKER 01 : 0:00

Greetings to the brightest audience in the country and welcome to Bob and Yart live today. We’re getting into a really fun sermon, which my father Bob and Yart gave at Agape kingdom fellowship titled the timing of the second coming has changed. You do not want to miss this. Let’s jump right into it.

SPEAKER 02 : 0:19

Good morning, Denver Bible church. We’re going to look at a parallel series of events that we’ve seen before, but we have new church members, so we especially want to share this with them. A series of events that happened, and then another series that parallels, goes alongside and corresponds to the first series. Only the first series of events didn’t happen one time, Not 10 times, not 100 times, not 1,000, 1,500 times approximately, this first series of events happened. And then once, and only once, the series happened a final time. Over the last two weeks, we’ve remembered Christ’s trial, his crucifixion, and then his resurrection. These events are part of the Christian calendar today. the New Testament calendar, if you will. And in fact, they’re also paralleled, they’re prefigured in the Old Testament calendar by the seven feasts of Israel. And because of that, they tell us what’s next. After the resurrection, then what is next on the Christian calendar or the Bible’s calendar. Last week was Resurrection Sunday, and we not only celebrated the risen Lord, but we also gave, as we typically do, evidence so that the unbelievers who were here, and there were some, would see that it’s not blind faith that people have to trust in Jesus Christ, but it’s the proper response to the evidence that we know that God is real and Jesus rose from the dead. And so we could have included this last week, but there are the time constraints. Today, we’ll look at this next event on the Jewish calendar because every year around the world, when Christians are remembering the resurrection, the Jews are observing their Passover. There’s a correlation. And so by looking at these parallel events, we will see another way, yet another way that God wove the truth of his salvation into the very history of the world, into Israel’s history for 1,500 years as a way of confirming the truth of his story. that is of Christ’s purpose for coming to earth. And I’ve noticed over the years that although this is the most important series and series of parallel events in the Bible, many believers tend to not be aware of it, or if they’re aware of it, only vaguely so that they have a hard time sharing it with others. So even though we’ve covered this in the past, mostly in Bible studies, occasionally mentioned in a sermon, this time, and because it fits in this part of the year, the calendar year, this time hopefully we’ll do it in a way that will make this vital information easier to remember. So we’ll look at a few slides. And first, we will see this parallel series of events, these calendar events, to help us get a visual image. And then we’ll do that somewhat quickly. And then we’ll talk through what we had just seen. So. The Old Testament material for this parallel series of events comes from the book of Leviticus chapter 23, the Bible’s seven feasts, also called the seven feasts of Israel. You have slides you could see behind me. The Bible’s feasts are being fulfilled And we list the seven on the screen. And if you notice, there’s a gap. And it’s not because there’s an eighth feast, but there’s something especially interesting having to do with that Passover there. We list first tabernacles, which might surprise people, because in some understanding of it, that would be the last feast. And then Passover and unleavened bread and first fruits and feast of weeks and trumpets and atonement. And we’ll look at when those feasts occurred. And the one we have listed first, Tabernacles, normally that’s presented as the last feast. But it’s interesting because it occurs… in Israel’s holy calendar on the 15th day of the seventh month of the year. So that’s the last feast based on the current calendar in Israel and today, the way we view the calendar. But when God first created the earth, and we’re thinking of the northern hemisphere where most of the world’s population and land mass is, When God first created the earth, even though the surface of the earth was reworked in the global flood, when did he make it? Based on our current calendar, did he make the earth in the dead of winter? Did he make it in the springtime? You might think that’s a good time because spring is like the beginning. Or did he make it in the summer, like in the middle of the day? Or did he make it in the fall? And many theologians for centuries studying the Bible have argued, and I think persuasively, including Bishop Usher, that because God views a day as evening and morning, the first day, evening and morning, the second day, recall that? We follow the Romans in starting the day at the dead of night, at midnight, when most people are asleep, so it’s not a big disruption, the fact that the day has changed. And if it’s in the middle of the day, it’s a disruption to your planning, your schedule, your contracts, your calendar if the day changed at noon. So the Romans said, let it change at midnight when we’re all asleep. But God began the day at sunset. Remember that in the Bible? And so Israel’s kingdom, the day begins at dusk. Well, it is reasoned that perhaps in God’s mind, When he created the earth, the first year he would have begun in what we would call the autumn or the fall. And so let’s consider that very possibly God began, created the earth in what we call the fall. And if so, then the last feast might have just made the cut. And really, it might have been the first feast of the year based on the original created calendar. We don’t know for sure, but those are pretty strong arguments. So tabernacles occurred on our current calendar for Israel on the 15th day of the seventh month. Remember at the Exodus, God said, we’re going to change your calendar. Does anybody recall that? God changed the calendar at the Exodus. He said, from now on, the beginning of the year, will be in the spring from now on. It didn’t used to be that way. And in fact, the Jews today celebrate Rosh Hashanah, their new year, in the fall. Because that’s pretty clearly the way God originally created the earth and its original calendar. Although the Jews should be recognizing the first of their year in the spring because God said, do that. But the nation of Israel, like America, is in rebellion against God and not overly inclined to obey him, as with us. So tabernacles, the 15th day of the seventh month. And then picture in your mind the calendar, almost like it’s a clock, and go around to then the spring of the next year. And we’re in the first month. The Jews call this month Nisan or Abib, two names for the month. And there’s something that God said to do on the 10th day of the first month, and we’ll get to that in a few minutes. But then on the 14th day of the first month was the Passover. And I put 13th, 14th, because they killed the Passover lamb on the 13th. So that’s what we call the preparation day for the Passover. So we think of the Passover as on the 14th day of the month, but the Passover is so thoroughly identified with the killing of the Passover lamb that you could think of it almost as a two-day feast. From the 13th when you slay the lamb to the 14th when you keep then the ritual of the Passover. Unleavened bread begins on the 15th of the first month, and it goes on for a period of days. And recall that the Jews had bread that they didn’t put leaven in, yeast, so it didn’t rise. Remember that? That’s called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And then the Feast of Weeks, that was 50 days later. And then trumpets were back around to the fall now, the first day of the seventh month. And then the Feast of Atonement on the 10th day of the seventh month. So what was that thing that happened on the 10th day of the first month? Well, that was the day on which the Jews would purchase the Passover lamb. God said, on this day, every year, buy the Passover lamb. And then you’ll keep it with your family for the next few days until it becomes the sacrifice. And if you own animals, if you have friends who own animals, we just spent a week with the McBurney’s in California, San Diego County. And they’ve got so many. Their chicken coop is two stories, a chicken run, 70 chickens, ducks, geese. I don’t know what all they got. A goat pen, many goats. And their kids, when they got to slaughter a chicken and eat it because they have too many, they give it to a neighbor and they say, here, could you kill it? We don’t want to kill it. We just take the eggs. But you get to know your animals, you know, you get to know them. And so for this lamb to be with the family for three days, the kids, the family would sort of get to know the lamb and then it’s slain as a sacrifice. Wow. Wow. And so how are these fulfilled then in the New Testament? Well, the first, the incarnation. When God the Son tabernacled, the Bible says, among men. He tabernacled among us. Normally you’d expect to read in the New Testament that God the Son dwelt with us, but intentionally John does not use the word dwell here. Oikos, he uses a Greek word for tent, or he tented, he tabernacled among us. Wow. Then the pieces of silver. On the 10th day of the first month, only 33 years later, Judas betrayed Jesus Christ, and the high priest Caiaphas paid him 30 pieces of silver. And that was, the New Testament doesn’t tell us which day of the week that was. But it was most likely on a Monday. And then Jesus died on a Thursday. Remember that? That Jesus died on a Thursday. Many Christians say, the Catholics especially, he died on Friday. And they call it Good Friday. But they say that because he was on the cross and they wanted to get his body off before the Sabbath. But they’ve utterly forgotten that the Sabbath is not only every Saturday, it’s also every feast day. So every feast day, the Passover is the Sabbath. And the Feast of Trumpets, that day is the Sabbath. And each of the Day of Atonement is the Sabbath. Does that make sense? So because the Passover is coming up, they had to get Jesus off the cross. It doesn’t mean it was a Friday before Saturday. It means it was the day before the Passover. That’s why they had to get the Lord off the cross so they could continue their ritual celebration, forgetting, not realizing that it all pointed to Jesus Christ. So… Jesus died on a Thursday, and then as the Bible says, he was three days and three nights in the tomb. Thursday, Thursday night, Friday, Friday night, Saturday, Saturday night, he rose on the first day of the week, Sunday morning, as the Bible says. But then we have the incarnation, the pieces of silver, and then the crucifixion. and going on the burial. Jesus was in the tomb during the Feast of Unleavened Bread when the symbolism is that the bread will not rise, and that’s because it has no leaven, which in the Bible is a symbol of sin. We’ll talk about that in a few minutes. And then, first fruits would be what? The resurrection. And the Bible says, notice when the first fruits is. So the Passover on the 14th day of the month, the Feast of Unleavened Bread begins the next day. And if you go back and read in Leviticus 23, it says then whenever the Sabbath falls in that Feast of Unleavened Bread, the very next day is the Feast of First Fruits. So that’s a weird formula. For how do you figure out when the Feast of First Fruits is? It might be the next day, it might be two days later, three days later, four days later, depending on what day of the week Unleavened Bread began. And so the New Testament telling us that Jesus rose not only on the first day of the week, Sunday, but also it was the Feast of First Fruits because he was the first to rise from the dead, never to die again. Then after the Feast of First Fruits, which was fulfilled in the resurrection, we have the Feast of Weeks 50 days later. And we know from our Christian training that that happened to also be Pentecost when God sent the Holy Spirit to dwell in every believer. And then the two feasts that have not yet been fulfilled. The first we teach is to be fulfilled in the second coming. And the seventh in the consummation of all things. So now let’s talk through this. The Old Testament material for this parallel series of events. Notice you have a series of events in the Feast, and a series of events with Jesus Christ fulfilling the Feast. That material comes in the Old Testament from Leviticus 23. The Passover, unleavened bread, first fruits, the Feast of Weeks, of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Tabernacles. These feasts speak of Jesus. As the Lord said in the Gospel of John, chapter 5, you search the scriptures, but they speak of me. So there are people who will read the Bible to build an argument against Jesus. That was happening when he was there. He said, you search the scriptures, but they speak of me. Yeah, you could twist anything. You could make any argument you want out of the dictionary, whatever. It doesn’t mean it’s true. And in fact, you are rejecting the very scriptures you claim to be standing on if you conclude that I am not the Savior of the world. In Luke chapter 24, the Lord said that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses. So Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Leviticus 23 is pretty much smack dab in the middle of the Pentateuch. They must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And that’s the three divisions of the Hebrew Old Testament, which include all 39 books of the Old Testament. So Jesus was crucified on the preparation day. That is, on the day the Jews were killing their Passover lambs. And what happened a few days before the Lord’s crucifixion is that the high priest… acquired him as the sacrifice. When every family in Israel were purchasing the Passover lamb, he paid 30 pieces of silver for the Lamb of God. He paid that to Judas. The Gospels don’t make explicit that timing, but we do know it was a bit before Judas then led the soldiers to Jesus on Mount Golgotha, on the Mount of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane. So the New Testament doesn’t say exactly what day of the week Judas was paid, but God enjoys fulfilling his symbolic ordinances, and almost certainly it would have been on the 10th day of the first month. And that would have been four days before Christ’s crucifixion, depending on how you count the days. Caiaphas, paying for Jesus, and thus fulfilling Exodus chapter 12, verse 3, where it says, on this tenth day, that’s when you buy the lamb. the lamb who would be slain for the sin of the world. The Passover lamb was slain so that death would pass over. And Jesus, the lamb of God, was slain so that all who trust in him, death would pass over. In Revelation, dozens of times it uses a Greek word for lamb. And it uses that word as the symbol under which God has victory over his enemies. The symbol under which the armies of the Lord march. And that symbol, the lamb, it is the lamb that was slain. Could you imagine an army today marching? You would expect their banner to show like, you know, nuclear weapons or something. But the banner of the army to be victorious is a lamb that was slain? That is extraordinary. And that is John’s revelation of Jesus Christ from 2,000 years ago. The Lord was buried… in the tomb during the days of that Passover, just like we say the holidays and skeptics and atheists, people who hate Christ, they intentionally call them the holidays because they don’t want to say Christmas. But we refer to the holidays, meaning a period of time where there’s more than one special feast day. And they did also, it was the Passover and it was unleavened bread. It was that period of time in the spring. And so Jesus was in the tomb during the Passover, that is during the Feast of Unleavened Bread, during that very calendar week. Do you realize what that’s doing? It’s providing evidence to us thousands of years later to confirm that what happened to Jesus Christ was not happenstance, but it was God’s plan to save all those who would trust in him. Because we have these dates woven into the history of Israel and for over a thousand years. For a thousand years, the Jews did these things. 1,500 years since Moses. And Jesus Christ comes. And never once does he say, thus saith the Lord. Remember that? In the Old Testament, over 400 times, beginning with Moses, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord, thus saith the Lord. Jesus never said that. Instead, over 100 times, he said, I say unto you. I say unto you. Because he is the Lord. He is the creator. The savior. And even though he was the bread from heaven, still, because he had no sin, and a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Remember those ideas in the Bible? Paul wrote that Christ is our Passover, and he also wrote that a little leaven leavens the whole lump. Leaven is a symbol of sin. You have a little bit in your church, and you don’t deal with it, and it will spread throughout the whole congregation. You have one family destroying their kids, And the church just looks the other way, and pretty soon kids and other families are destroyed because a little leaven leavens the whole lump. The Lord’s body did not see corruption for leaven produces decomposition, symbolizing sin. And so unleavened bread does not decompose, and that’s how bread rises again. Because as the yeast decomposes, it produces gas. And those gases, if you ever go in the back room of a bakery, they make you almost throw up if you’re not used to it. It smells putrid because that’s what it is. All these tiny microorganisms, their bodies decaying, and all that gas that’s now the leaven that’s causing your bread to rise. And Jesus had none of that leaven in him, so to speak. No sin. So his body did not decompose. Because if the bread doesn’t rise, then it’s also not going to rot. You get those connections? Unleavened bread lasts a long, long time. So the Jews were leaving Egypt. God said, don’t put leaven in your bread. Unleavened bread doesn’t rise. Jesus had no sin of his own, but rather he died for the sin of the world, so his body did not see corruption. Remember Lazarus had just recently died, and they said, don’t open the tomb because he stinketh, right? And Jesus said, Lazarus, come forth. And he raised Lazarus just in a few days before his own death and resurrection. So Jesus fulfilled not only Passover, but the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And he was raised from the dead on the Feast of First Fruits, which is the first Sunday after the Sabbath during the week of the Passover, or during the week of Unleavened Bread, more precisely. And that’s the harvest in the springtime. Jesus was raised from the dead, the first to rise from the dead, never to die again. Lazarus died again, right? Jesus fulfilled the feast, the first fruits. He was our first fruits. So there the Lord fulfilled three of the seven feasts, Passover, unleavened bread, and first fruits, each on the actual appropriate calendar day. That’s powerful evidence in addition to all the rest of the evidence in the Bible and in the world. Then 50 days later, On the Feast of Weeks, the very day we call it Pentecost, Greek for 50, like the Pentagon, five sides. The Feast of Weeks had seven sevens, seven weeks, plus one day, which made that 50 days later. And that’s the very day when Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit on all those who believed in Jerusalem. And so that’s what’s next. That’s what’s coming next. In the calendar after the resurrection, of course, there’s the ascension of Jesus Christ on the 40th day. But then for the church, there is Pentecost and a reminder to us of what began 2,000 years ago that the Holy Spirit today is in every believer. When the Holy Spirit came on David, it was only temporary to perform some act for the Lord of service. And David wrote, please, Lord, take not your Holy Spirit from me. Because he loved it when the Holy Spirit would come on him and he would be able to honor God in the most extraordinary ways. But for us, we don’t have to pray, take not your Holy Spirit from us. Because we have the indwelling of the Holy Spirit throughout our entire lives from when we first trust in Christ to when we go to be with him. And so the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks was fulfilled on the very calendar day. Wow. And so… We talked about the Jews and their New Year’s Day, Rosh Hashanah, in the fall, right? And that begins their year. Because that goes back from before Moses, from before the Exodus, when God said, from now on, start the year in this month, in the spring. Before that, God’s year began in the fall. And so with that bit of insight… we think of the Feast of Tabernacles. A tabernacle is a tent. And John, as I mentioned earlier, he wrote in his Gospel, chapter 1, verse 14, the Word became flesh and tented among us. He wrote, he tabernacled among us. And that is some evidence that tabernacle, a temporary dwelling, was actually fulfilled in in Jesus Christ through the incarnation. And there’s so many fascinating particulars about that. E.W. Bullinger in his companion Bible, he argues, he doesn’t prove his case.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:50

Stop the tape, stop the tape. Hey, we are out of time. If you want the rest of this broadcast, go to kgov.com. That’s K-G-O-V.com.