Lesson 31
Destiny in a Calendar – 16:1-8
We are working on the section of Deuteronomy that extends from chapter
12-16. The theme or the great outline of
this whole section of Deuteronomy, of course it falls in the larger section of
how to love the Lord, the God of Israel, with all the details of life. In this particular section it’s stressing the
unity of the nation. We said that no
nation on earth is going to exist including the
Our next section that begins in Deut. 17-21 deals with national righteousness. Here we’re going to get into law and order;
we’re going to get into the policeman on the street, the judge behind the
bench, the lawmakers, the executive, judicial and legislative branches of
government. You will see something very
interesting, that the Bible says before you can have national righteousness,
which is the big concern, national law and order if you want to put it that
way, before you can have any of this kind of thing you have to have national
unity. Unity must precede law and order. You cannot impose law and order without
having something that ties the nation together. This principle holds true of
Someone on television said today why are we spending all this money on
the space program, why don’t we spend it on social problems. I hope now since we’ve gone through Deut.
14-15 you will understand you could take all the money in the space program,
multiply it by ten and apply it to social problems and you wouldn’t get one
foot of advancement. Money is not going
to solve social problems. For years I
have supported a mission in New York City that works in Harlem and the man who
runs this is a converted ex-convict, and in practically every communication he
makes the point that welfare in the Harlem area is a total waste of money. The war of poverty is nothing but a big sewer
pipe for the American public that they can put their money down this thing and
never see it again. It is accomplishing
absolutely zero and the reason is because it cannot reach the basic problem in
the human heart. This is a small
mission in Harlem and it’s not going change Harlem but individuals are changed
and it’s done in such a fantastic way that the government sends down officials
to find out what the secret is. And he
keeps telling them that I don’t do anything around here, it’s God’s grace that
does it. Of course, they don’t believe
that and they look around behind the doors and in the closet, etc. to find out
what his secret is. His secret he has
declared many times is just to present the Word of God, regardless of your
racial background you still are a sinner and regardless of your racial
background Jesus Christ died for you. So
the solution is always the same. Until
we return to this kind of solution we are going to have continued rupture in
the country and our people, and it’s always going to be solved this way.
Therefore the big lesson to draw from Deuteronomy is watch the order of
the chapters. Chapters 12-16 emphasize
unity, unity, unity. Chapter 12
emphasizes the fact that the nation had one central sanctuary and this tied the
nation together. Chapter 13 said the
nation had one basic dogma, one basic law, one basic constitution and no one
was to violate this constitution. To do
so was an act of treason. They didn’t
tolerate, for example, young Jewish boys going out and burning their draft
cards, we don’t want to fight for Yahweh tomorrow so we’ll burn our draft
cards. If they did that in the nation
Israel they got burned, literally.
That’s how they handled that problem.
The reason why they did this was because they recognized you have to
have a national unity. Then chapters 14-15 dealt with the unified religious
practices of the nation, defining the good life. It takes in diet, it takes in funerals, it
takes in poverty, it takes in welfare, and we showed how poverty, for example,
to take one solution, is basically a spiritual problem. As you can see if you’ll just check chapter
15 where the promise is made that war on poverty would be successful if
something was followed.
Deut. 4:15 is a successful war on poverty and not done by government; it
is done by individuals who are personally, because of positive volition toward
the Word of God in their own lives they are testifying for Christ and having
effect in society. In verse 4 Moses
writes, “However, there will be no poor among you; for the LORD shall greatly
bless thee in the land which the LORD thy God gives thee for an inheritance to
possess it, [5] Only if….” Verse 5 is
the last part of the sentence of verse 4, “Only if you really [carefully]
hearken unto the voice of the LORD thy God,” etc. There you have it stated in black and white;
poverty is a spiritual problem. I am not
saying necessarily that the people that wind up poor are necessarily having
spiritual problems. I’m saying that judging a nation as a nation, judging as a
group, as a national entity that has a spiritual destiny before the Lord, you
have this one group and it’s judged, and God rates a nation spiritually.
There is a spiritual rating. We don’t know much about this in history
but somehow God does spiritually rate nations.
God looks down and He sees a national entity, like the United States
that has had continual opportunity after continual opportunity, a nation born
in 1776 and isn’t even 200 years old that has had the best preachers in the
world, the best men in church history actually have lived in the United States,
the most sharp theologians since the time of the Reformation have lived in the
United States. The greatest missionaries have come from the United States. You have had the largest and most widespread
Bible teaching ministry in the United States. The United States has been the
spiritual leader of the world up until the 20’s and 30’s of this century and
God looks down and He says what is the spirituality of that nation. And He is going to work the wheels of history
around so that this nation will be judged and is being judged. When you look out and you see crime, drug
addiction, society falling apart at the seams, don’t think like a lot of
Christians think, oh, if this keeps up we’re going to have the judgment of
God. This is a misreading because in
Romans 1 it says these are already signs that God is judging the nation. The very fact that this stuff is increasing
is the fact that God is taking His hand off, He’s saying okay, you people have
had an opportunity to trust in the Word, I have sent Bible teacher after Bible
teacher, I have had men preach their heart out over the radio to this country,
I have had people go around door to door, I have had people in small churches
and large churches faithfully teaching the Word of God, and still you have
rejected so I am just taking My hand off and you have your sin natures and I’m
just going to let the sin nature play off and you are going to judge
yourselves.
This is what we are seeing, God’s hand, called common grace in theology,
common grace is slowly being removed so on the inside positive volition going
to negative volition. Inside the human
heart you have the old sin nature, the old sin nature is largely controlled in
times of blessing by God’s common grace, and after the point of judgment is
reached God releases His hand and lets the sin nature spill out and this is
what’s happening in our society. The
reason is not because God is abandoning us but because we have abandoned
Him.
These problems have manifested themselves all sorts of ways. They manifested themselves sociologically and
people get looking at the sociological problem; they get looking at the racial
problem, they get looking at all these problems and they think in terms of
this: if we can manipulate these factors around then we’ve got the solution
made. But the point is not that at all,
the point is that because God has allowed judgment to occur, these are the
symptoms, not the causes, and this is why we say that yes, you can have some
success in some social programs and you can spend your time running around
solving this problem and that problem, and you can, under God’s grace work some results, but how silly to waste
your time on these symptoms when the root of the cause is a spiritual one.
Go back to the nation Israel, say four or five centuries after this Law
was written, you had a man by the name of Josiah, and Josiah got looking around
in his time, he was one of the oddities in the ancient world because Josiah had
a klutz for a father. It was very
interesting how the kings worked out: father was an idiot, son was a genius,
and this guy who was his son’s son, he was an idiot, and this alternated on the
throne of Israel. For example, you had
Solomon, a very wise man and he had an idiot son called Rehoboam who divided
the nation. And you had Josiah and so on, then you had Manasseh and you had
these people all mixed together. Josiah
looked around and said what can I do in my day.
He said look, my nation is falling apart, I’ve got to do something to
solve the national problem and so what I am going to do is promote a tremendous
Bible teaching, and he had paid Bible teachers that went around city to city
teaching the Word of God in his day, and had a limited revival. But the judgment of God upon the nation
Israel was postponed. Josiah lived about
600 BC and you have in 600 BC this limited revival. God said if you don’t get with it Israel, I’m
going to judge you and so what happened as a result of this revival, it wasn’t
enough to turn away the wrath of God but it was enough to postpone
judgment. That’s the point.
And that’s what we would basically pray for as I read history, actually
there’s no way to turn away God’s wrath from this nation but there is a way of
postponing His wrath and the way of postponing His wrath would be a back to
the Bible movement across this nation.
This is going to require the grace of God. This is going to require a tremendous amount
of grace because of the fact that we have the media against us, you will never
get it reported on CBS, NBC or ABC, you will never get it reported in any of the
major magazines, therefore you are going to have to depend on word of mouth,
local, small publications, etc. You
cannot depend on the national media.
The media is all arranged against us so it’s only by God’s grace that we
could possibly have a Biblical revival.
This is why I stress over and over again that the basic thing for the
Christian life is study of the Word because this is the only thing that’s going
to precipitate a revival in our day.
It’s the only thing that’s going to fortify you so that wherever you are
you can carry on an intelligent conversation for more than two minutes about a
spiritual topic. This will enable you to
be able to present an issue before the unbeliever. Later on if things go on there’s going to be
a gnawing question in the hearts of many Christians, what did I do as a
Bible-believing Christian when I had the opportunity to testify, when I had the
opportunity to study God’s Word, when I had the opportunity to share the gospel
with the unbeliever, what was I doing. I
was sitting in the house glued to the tube or something, I was doing this and I
was doing that and the nation falls apart and all of a sudden a lot of
Christians are going to be running around, what can I do, what can I do, and
their situation will be just like Jeremiah’s day, you can do nothing, it is too
late. The time of salvation is the
present and if Christians do not get with the Word of God and do not begin to
apply it in their life in a serious way are asking for trouble. So it’s not without seriousness that we go
over and over again the admonition to study the Word and to live out its
implications. This is the only thing
that is going to hold this nation together.
Tonight we come to the last section of the unity section of Deuteronomy,
chapter 16 and here we begin something that is a very strange thing, it is the
most unique thing in history, no nation ever had this, for in chapter 16 we are
introduced to the national calendar of the nation, a calendar designed by God
to spell out the national destiny. In
other words, as they celebrated holidays, etc. these sequences of holidays
themselves were to picture the history of the nation, so every year from Abib,
down to the next Abib, this month is March/April to us, it’s somewhere between
March and April. So from March/April to
March April, from spring to spring, the calendar of the nation spelled out the
prophetic program of the nation. What
unified the country was the divine plan of history that God had for this
nation, so that by going through the calendar each year, year after year after
year, the annual celebrations would reflect future events that would happen in
the nation.
We’re going to take up two elements in that calendar, one is mentioned
here and one is omitted but we’re going to deal with both of them. The first one is Passover—Unleavened
Bread. Passover is one holiday but
Unleavened Bread is the feast. This
chapter is just looking at feasts but since I want to give the complete
background we’ll deal with Passover and Unleavened Bread, and then we’ll deal
with something called Firstfruits, that’s not talking about the fruits in the
nation, this is talking about the first signs of the harvest. This has a tremendously important prophetic
aspect and we’ll deal with it when we get there.
In Deut. 16:1-8 we have the first section, Passover and Unleavened Bread. On the 14th of Nisan, which is a
month corresponding to half of March and half of April, you have this setup.
You have 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21 and these are 8 days. The 14th is Passover, and these
days are the seven days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. That’s the situation, what does this speak
of. Look at verse 1, “Observe the month
of Abib,” pronounced in the Hebrew as though the “b’s” were “v’s”, “and keep
the Passover unto the LORD thy God,” actually this word “keep” means to prepare
the Passover, “unto the LORD thy God, for in the month of Abib the LORD thy God
brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt by night.” Each one of these feasts, and this is how to
keep these in order, each one of these feasts has two things associated with
it. The first one has a basis in
history. That’s the first thing to
remember about each one of these feasts, that it reflects a historical
event. The second thing about each one
of these feasts is that it’s prophetic; it looks forward to something in the
future, so therefore each feast has a fulfillment. These are two things that are associated with
every one of these feasts. So now you
can see the national system of education; God even designed the calendar so
that as the people celebrated their holy days they would reflect on the destiny
of this nation.
“Observe the month of Abib, and keep [or prepare] the Passover unto the
LORD thy God,” we will not deal with the basic preparation of the Passover here
because an expert, a Jewish Christian is going to come that’s going to tell you
all the details of the Passover. You’ll
get it from a person who knows what Passover is, who’s celebrated it as a
non-Christian and who has celebrated as a Christian and therefore can give you
very good details on the background of the Passover. But as I review it in the communion service
the Passover is simply that time in Israel’s history when blood was put on the
door by faith. You had certain things
happen. You had the nation in
bondage. Moses said I want you to put
blood on the door, and they put blood on the door, making the sign of the
cross, although they weren’t conscious that they were making the sign of the
cross. They put blood on the door and
the angel of death passed over when he saw the blood. The angel of death went
throughout Egypt and killed, killed, killed, killed, killed, but where he saw
blood he passed over and that’s why we call it pecach, or the Hebrew for Passover.
The interesting thing about this was that the blood was applied in
faith, you had to believe the blood would work to apply it, and secondly, the
reason why the angel of death passed over was not because of the scintillating
personalities of the people that were in the house, or because of their good
works, or because they were such solid citizens, or because they were such
impressive people to meet. It was solely
on one thing, the blood. And that is the
reason why you are exempt, if you are a Christian, from God’s judgment. It is not because you’re so great, it’s
because of God’s grace and Jesus Christ.
Some people can’t understand that.
Salvation is always by faith through grace.
This is “the Passover unto the LORD thy God, for in the month of Abib
the LORD thy God brought thee forth out of Egypt by night.” This is the historical event. Remember
because this is going to be important as we come down into the prophetic feasts
that have not been fulfilled. Remember
every feast has two aspects, history and prophecy. It has a historical base and it has a
prophetic fulfillment. All right, now
the unleavened bread; this is called mazzoth
in the Hebrew. It’s called the Feast of Mazzoth.
Verse 2, “Thou shalt, therefore, sacrifice the Passover unto the LORD
thy God, of the flock and the herd, in the place which the LORD shall choose to
place His name there.” In other words,
the flock and the herd is not referring to the Passover lamb, this is referring
to the meat and sacrifices of the whole seven days. Verse 3, “Thou shalt eat no
leavened bread with it. Seven days shalt
thou eat unleavened bread therewith,” now why.
Why is the unleavened bread a sign of Passover? If you have some Jewish friends today they do
not celebrate Passover. They have what
they call Passover which is actually the Feast of Unleavened Bread. They celebrate 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and
21, they celebrate these seven days, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, but the
modern Jew calls that the Feast of the Passover; it’s not the Feast of the
Passover, the Passover was on the 14th. They have no temple so the modern Jew can’t
celebrate Passover. This is an open for
the Jew, you can ask him why his temple is gone. The reason is that the temple is you; the
temple is the body that the Holy Spirit is in right now, the Church. Therefore the modern day Jew celebrates this
Feast of Unleavened Bread, he still does it, at least the Orthodox Jews
do. It’s called here in verse 2, [“Seven
days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction,”]
the bread of affliction, unleavened bread.
I’m sure you know what unleavened bread is; it tastes like paper when
you eat it; it’s awful tasting stuff, it’s just solid dough, that’s all it is,
nothing raised about it, it’s just packed down.
So the Unleavened Bread was eaten during this time. Now we have to ask ourselves why; why was it
that the Jewish women when they made the bread during this period were not
allowed to use leaven. Why did they have
to take all the leaven and throw it out?
It goes back to the time of Exodus 12 and the custom of the ancient
world. Leaven… I know many of you
identify leaven with apostasy, etc. it later came to have that meaning, but I
want to show you what it first meant.
Leaven in the ancient world was a sign of continuity. For example, a young girl would get married
and set up housekeeping in a new home and she would take leaven from her mother
and bring this to the new home and that would establish continuity. In other words, she would bring the leaven
and there would be continuity between the homes. The big thing with leaven is that in the Old
Testament when the people left Egypt they were to throw out all the leaven. Why?
They were to have no continuity with the world. When they left Egypt it was to be a total
break, so therefore there could be nothing that would come from that previous
situation in life and they had to start all over again. They couldn’t bring something from Egypt and
use it as the base of blessing in the new life.
That would be just like the young Jewish girl in that day getting
married and saying to her mother, I don’t want leaven, and the boy to say I
don’t want to be supplied with anything, we’re going to start off new,
completely separate.
This is the way the nation started and the idea behind the unleavened
bread that you want to identify is separation.
That is why leaven was not used; it was not used to break the
continuity. There could not be
continuity between Israel and Egypt.
There had to be a total 100% break and this is why leaven could not be
used, “the bread of affliction.” Why was
it called “the bread of affliction”?
Because the people in Exodus 12 had to evacuate rapidly, they had to
move fast, they had to take a minimum of possessions, and therefore Moses said
I want you to just chuck this leaven, I don’t want to see it around here, just
get rid of it. So they moved out into
the desert with no leaven. This is why
every time the Feast of Unleavened Bread came up they had to purge their homes
of leaven, to once again have a forceful reminder of the separation from
Egypt.
Let’s see how this is used in the New Testament. Now we understand the Old Testament custom,
let’s turn to 1 Cor. 5 for the application in the New Testament and you’ll see
how Paul picks this up and applies it to the Christian life. This is an application and not an
interpretation in Corinthians. 1 Cor.
5:6, and to get background we’ll start in verse 1, “It is reported commonly
that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as it not so much as
named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father’s wife. [2] And ye
are puffed up, and have not rather mourned, that he that hath done this deed
might be taken away from among you.” You
can see the Corinthians… by the way, isn’t it interesting, the church had all
the tongues crowd had all this too. I
find it very amusing when people cite tongues as a sign of spirituality, it’s
always amusing, I always have to laugh at people that identify tongues with some
great spiritual blessing. They had
fornication, adultery and everything else in this church. If a church had this kind of activity today
it’d be all over the headlines; CBS news would get hold of it and have an hour
special. So we have a Corinthian church,
filled with the tongues people and filled with all this nonsense that’s going
on. So he commands them to excommunicate
this fellow, just get him out of the way.
Verse 6, “Your glorying is not good.
Know ye not that a little leaven leavens the whole lump.” Verse 7,
“Purge out, therefore, the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump, as ye are
unleavened. For even Christ, our
Passover, is sacrificed for us [8] Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with
old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.”
Knowing what you just discovered about the original Old Testament
custom, do you see what Paul is saying here.
He’s saying look, when you look at bread, here’s a loaf of bread and it’s
got leaven in it. Here’s a bread that’s
flat, unleavened. What Paul is doing is
making an analogy, and he’s saying look, if you look at your heart the way it
was originally constructed you have an old sin nature in there and this old sin
nature has a lot of works of the flesh with it and what he’s saying is that
when you are filled with the Spirit and now the Holy Spirit controls and not
the flesh, when you have this, then this leaven is purged out and he identifies
what he means by the leaven when he carefully mentions in verse 8 “the leaven
of malice and wickedness,” in other words, the leaven here that Paul wants
removed is the works of the flesh.
How can you personally remove the works of the flesh? You don’t do it by crucifying yourself. As one man said you can nail your two legs to
the cross and one hand but there’s always the other hand, how do you get that
crucified? You can’t! There’s no way you
can crucify yourself, just forget it.
You have been already, by position, Romans 6, crucified and it’s just
appropriating the results of this by faith.
Therefore when we do this the Holy Spirit takes over and now the Holy
Spirit runs the life and not the flesh and therefore you have the fruit of the
Spirit. That’s what it means, the old
sin nature and its works are the leaven; just like the bread, you get the
unleavened bread by removing the leaven and it completely changes the taste of
the bread, it completely changes the appearance of the bread, it completely
changes the whole thing. It’s the same
thing here, when the Holy Spirit takes over in a person’s life it completely
changes it. It changes the
characteristics, etc. and this is the analogy Paul is drawing here, “the
unleavened bread of sincerity and truth,” the fruit of the Holy Spirit. He’s drawing the analogy, which shows you
something. The Corinthians, as bad as
they were, knew the doctrines associated with the feasts, or he never would
have used this illustration. This is why I say again and again we have to
understand the Old Testament if we are to appreciate the New Testament.
Now let’s go back a verse in Corinthians and notice smoothing very
interesting. Verse 7, “Purge out,
therefore, the old leaven,” but then he makes an interesting statement, “that
ye may be a new lump, as ye are unleavened.”
It’s interesting, the word “are unleavened” refers to the position of
the Christian. You, by position, have no
leaven belonging to you. But he says you
can pick this leaven up from the old nature and you can add it on, it’s an
aberrant thing, it’s something that’s unusual, abnormal, that shouldn’t be
there, you have no real right to it. By
position you are unleavened, and Paul just simply appeals in verse 7, “purge
out the leaven,” throw it out, you’re not leavened bread, you’re unleavened,
why do you need leaven around. And it’s
the same thing here. You as a Christian
have been built to run on the power of the Holy Spirit, not on the power of the
flesh. So why fiddle with it. You see, the point he’s making here is that
these people are already saved, it’s not talking about loss of salvation,
present tense, “you are unleavened.” Who
are the ones that he’s talking about that are unleavened? The people who are laughing at fornication in
this chapter; these are the people who, pardon the expression, are saved
forever by the grace of God. And they
are laughing and having their problems here in chapter 5, but nevertheless
Paul clearly states their position, they are unleavened. Now as a result of their position they’re
also leavened. It’s like a car that’s
built to run on a special kind of gasoline, you don’t go down to the pump and
order the cheap regular gas for it; it’s the same thing as a Christian, you
have been built, from the time that you’ve received Jesus Christ, to run on the
power of the Holy Spirit. So why try to
get along in the power of the flesh and experience all the frustrations and
everything else that comes with it when you are built to run on the Holy
Spirit. So that’s the analogy that
Paul’s drawing from the Feast of Unleavened Bread.
Now turn back to Deut. 16:5, “Thou mayest not sacrifice the Passover
within any of thy gates, which the LORD thy God gives you,” again, remember
what I said the gates were? Gates are
cities, it’s metonymy for cities, so it says don’t do this locally. I don’t want you doing this, I don’t care how
well you like to get together with your neighbor, when you do this feast you
can only do it one place. It goes back
to chapter 12, where was the place? The
central sanctuary. Why does He command
this? Because this is what gives the
nation unity. This is why there were
mobs in the city of Jerusalem on the day of Palm Sunday, why when Jesus rode in
on the ass and people threw palms down and they sang Hosanna, Hosanna, why were
those mobs in the city of Jerusalem?
Because this was the Passover season, they had come from all over the
land to come there and God, in His grace, chose just that time when the mob was
there, when the mob had come and clustered in Jerusalem to present His Messiah.
You see the reason for this feast is ultimately to attract the people to
the central sanctuary when God Himself is going to be there. You see God visited the central sanctuary in the
person of Jesus Christ and this is why all of the people had to come, and that
crucial day, that Passover when Jesus died, Jesus died on an afternoon, we
won’t get into the day of the week but I’ll show you something startling about
the day of the week in a moment, Jesus Christ died between 12:00 and 3:00 in
the afternoon, this is the darkness, the darkness time, and remember the people
said we have to get Him off the cross because tomorrow is the Sabbath. And of course, what tomorrow was was the
beginning of the Feast of the Unleavened Bread, etc. And Jesus Christ died in history on the very
day they were celebrating Passover. And
the numbskulls were celebrating the feast that spoke of Jesus Christ dying on
the cross, they were the ones that crucified Him, and they went home and
celebrated Passover. This is the
blindness of religion, how the Holy Spirit had worked and worked in that nation
to teach them, look, when you celebrate Passover, what are you doing? You are coming to the central sanctuary, you
are killing a lamb, you’re putting its blood on the mercy seat, and what did
that nation do in history in 30 AD? On
the very day of Passover Jesus Christ was killed and the blood of the Lamb of
God was shed.
This is why it’s so “ironic” (in quotes) how God works around history;
the very day of the feast was the day Jesus died and it was all by divine
design. “Thou mayest not sacrifice the
Passover within any of thy gates,” because God wanted the people to come down
to that central sanctuary. Where is the central sanctuary? The central sanctuary ultimately became
Jerusalem. At Jerusalem they had a
temple, originally a tabernacle, and in the temple shone the Shekinah glory, or
the glory of the Lord that Ezekiel eventually saw withdrawn, and if you were a
holy priest you had the opportunity of going in and seeing that glow. We don’t
know what it was but it was a visible glow that was inside the Holy of Holies
that denoted that God’s presence was there.
Now the ironic thing is that God’s presence really was there, because at
one time in history He came in the form of a man, and walked right into the
sanctuary and the people never recognized Him.
This would be the same today, people would say only if God was here we’d
know Him. Nonsense! A person’s attitude toward the Word of God is
his attitude toward God; there is no difference. You find people bored to death, sleeping
through the church service and everything else where the Word of God is being
taught, they would do the same thing if God Himself were up here talking. You may not believe that but that’s the
doctrine of inspiration of Scripture.
Now in verse 6, “But at the place which the LORD thy God shall choose to
place His name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the Passover at evening,” this is
late evening on the 14th of Nisan, as the sun would set they would
sacrifice this Passover, “at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou
camest forth out of Egypt.” Then what
would happen? Verse 7, “And thou shalt
roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy God shall choose; and thou
shalt turn in the morning, and go unto thy tents.” This was an all night blast and these people
had a party all night, and they didn’t hit the sack until four or five in the
morning because it took time and they had a feast with this thing. By the way, this shows you something else
about the Old Testament.
Oftentimes I have gotten the impression from the Old Testament that God
is stern, is cruel, that God judges in the Old Testament, He’s holy, He’s a God
of wrath, and yet isn’t it interesting that every worship gathering in the Old
Testament is one of joy, it’s one when people get together and actually have a
party in the presence of God. This shows
you what the Westminster catechism says.
For years and years I’ve never noticed the last part of that, where it
says “what is the highest end of man? To glorify God,” and I never thought what
the rest of that says, “to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” This is the destiny of man. It’s not just to
be straight-laced, sober and sad in the presence of God; it’s to enjoy
Him. This was a party, let’s face it,
that’s exactly what it was in verses 6 and 7, they had a party and people
relaxed, and people enjoyed themselves.
Can you imagine that, they relaxed and had a party in the presence of
God? This is Old Testament worship,
before God’s holiness; Yes. Don’t forget what they had to do to initiate… of
course, it would make me want to vomit so I wouldn’t enjoy the party, but they
had to slit this lamb’s throat and let it bleed to death, and you can image
this thing screaming it’s last breath, the blood spurting all over the place
and you’d get it all over your clothes, all over the ground and everything else
and that would ruin the party for me.
But nevertheless, these people were used to this, that was the way to
begin the party because that was the way you entered into the Holy of Holies,
that was the way you entered into the presence of a holy God.
“And thou shalt roast and eat it in the place which the LORD thy God
shall choose; and thou shalt turn in the morning,” this is when there’s nothing
left in the morning. Verse 8, “Six days
thou shalt eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day shall be a solemn
assembly to the LORD thy God; thou shalt do no work therein.” Here’s something you want to remember about
this and it will solve a lot of problems when you get to deal with Jesus in the
tomb for three literal days and three literal nights; if He was, He did not die
on Good Friday. Here’s the problem. In Nisan, on the 14th was
Passover; you have 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.
I’m always amused by this because a lot of these Bible commentators and
Bible students aren’t good enough mathematicians to realize something very
obvious about this. Is this related to days
of the week, or is it related not to days of the weeks. It’s not related to any day of the week, the
14th could fall on any day of the week, couldn’t it. Obviously, the
14th occurs on any day and whatever day it was, that was the
Passover. The next day, the 15th
was a Sabbath; the last day, the 21st was a Sabbath. Now, were or were not those Sabbaths geared
to the days of the week or not? You see
here’s the problem, every Saturday was a Sabbath in the week.
Now the question I’m asking you is: was the 15th always a
Saturday? No. Was the 15th always a
Sabbath? Yes. It had to be, by legislation, comparison with
Leviticus. The 15th and the
21st always had to be Sabbaths.
That was by divine decree. So
therefore when you see this thing in the New Testament where it says we’ve got
to get Jesus off the cross because tomorrow is the Sabbath, that’s not saying
the next day is Saturday, that’s just simply saying the next day is the 15th,
which is the Sabbath ordained in Leviticus.
If you ask my opinion, I think Jesus Christ died on Wednesday. He died on Wednesday night; He was in the
grave Thursday, Friday, Saturday and rose Sunday morning; three days and three
nights, three literal days and three literal nights. This is the only possible way you can
reconcile the New Testament with this system.
And I have read commentator after commentator say oh no, Jesus had to
die on a Friday because you have the next day Sabbath. But the next day wasn’t geared to the day of
the week; it was geared to the day of the month. Plus the fact you have Jesus saying the sign
of Jonah shall be given to this generation, three days and three nights in the
belly of the fish, etc. Therefore, to reconcile
these things we have to make this arrangement.
Therefore realize that Passover is geared to the day of the month, not
the day of the week and this will help understand some of the things in the Old
Testament.
Now let’s look carefully at Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread
and summarize what we’ve learned here. What
is the basis of them? The basis of
Passover and Unleavened Bread is first, the Exodus judgment on Pharaoh; Pharaoh
got clobbered and this was the celebration of that. Secondly, salvation by
faith in a Lamb’s work. [Blank spot] …
the blood of a lamb. Do you think, this
is just speculation, but if you were there the day that John the Baptist
preached, and John looked down the river bank and there came Jesus Christ, and
John reached out and said there is the Lamb of God, “Behold, the Lamb of God,”
do you think John knew what would happen to Jesus Christ. Of course he did, because he’d never have
called Jesus the Lamb of God had he not really realized… do you see that man
that’s coming down the river bank now, He’s going to be “the Lamb,” He’s the
Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Those words were spoken by John the Baptist,
and I think that John the Baptist was a careful student of the Passover and I
rather suspect that even that day in which Jesus walked down the bank might
have been the Passover in that year and John was simply saying you Jews today
are celebrating the Passover but I want to tell you something, the man that is
coming down here, He is the Passover, He is the Lamb of God, and He is the One
that is going to take away your sin.
What does this prefigure? What is
the future fulfillment of Passover?
Remember, this is the first great national feast; it had to be
celebrated every year. What did it
prefigure? It prefigured by
correspondence God’s judgment on Satan and the world system at the cross.
Secondly, it pictured salvation in the blood of Jesus. And finally, the Feast of the Unleavened
Bread, what was its basis? Separation
from Egypt, separation. What does the
Unleavened Bread correspond to? A
complete break with the old creation and now you have a new creation here.
Now I want to caution you about something. Not one of these truths were fulfilled by the
Church. These truths have only to do
with Israel and the reason we share in these truths is because God has cut us
in on the blessing that is rightfully due Israel. And this is why I say that unless you are a
dispensationalist you can forget adequate study of Scripture because in the Old
Testament all the prophecies related to God working through Israel. Every one
of these feasts is going to celebrate what God is going to do for Israel. And the reason we share in the Passover
fulfillment is because God has cut us in on the blessings He predicted for
Israel. It’s true, they apply to us, but
they weren’t predicted for us. That’s
the great mystery of the Church, the amazing grace that we as a Gentile were
cut in on the blessings of the nation.
And this is the amazing thing about the fact that the nation Israel, and
why God says never, never curse Israel, you treat a Jew like anyone else, if
he’s broken the law you put him in jail just like you do anyone else. It’s not talking about favored treatment, but
it’s talking against anti-Semitism. And
it says don’t mess with Israel because your salvation came through this nation
and Paul says I’ll tell you something else in Romans 11, don’t play games with
Israel because the world’s salvation is going to come through Israel and we’ll
see this as we get into the next feast.
Turn to Romans 9 and you’ll see how we got cut in on the blessings for
Israel. This is something that you want
to firm up in your thinking as you regard the Old Testament and New Testament,
always think of Israel as the physical instrument of God. It’s not that we aren’t sharing it, but the
main program of God in history is through the nation Israel. Rom. 9:3-5, Paul is speaking about Israel and
he says “For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my
brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, [4] Who are Israelites’ to whom
pertains the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
law, and the service of God, and the promises; [5] Whose are the fathers, and
of whom, as concerning the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, God blessed
forever. Amen.” By the way, if you want
a clear statement that Jesus is God in the Bible, there it is, you just saw it,
there “Christ” [is in] apposition [to] “God blessed forever.” Paul is calling Jesus Christ God in verse 5
of Romans 9.
Turn to Rom. 11:11-12, “I say, then, Have they stumbled,” this is
Israel, “has Israel stumbled that they should fall? God forbid; but rather through their fall
salvation is come unto the Gentiles, to provoke them to jealousy. [12] Now if
the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the
riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?” Paul is saying you people who are discouraged
by revolution, by social disorder, by the anarchy that parades in the world
today, you who are looking for world peace, just think, how did individual
personal salvation break into history.
It came because Israel fell. Now
he says suppose one day in the future Israel gets back in gear, Israel gets
back in the position they should be, fulfilling the will of God, then what will
the results to the world be. We know the
results will be world peace. The reason
why we do not have world peace today, one of them, is that Israel is not in the
will of God. If you could get the nation
Israel in the will of God you would have world peace, but you can’t. Therefore the main program and plan of God
comes through Israel and these feasts.
This was the national calendar and the first great feast they had was
Passover, Unleavened Bread, speaking of the death and resurrection of Christ.
In the remaining time I want to introduce to the next feast because I
want to skip this next feast and come to Pentecost, and it’s going to be a long
one because I’m going to cover this business of tongues, etc. once more, for
about the three hundredth time but I want to go through it again.
Turn to Lev. 23 and we’ll get background on a feast that comes between
Passover and Pentecost. Here’s why I
want to do this tonight. The next great
feast, you have the first feast called Passover, if you want to visualize this
in terms of our calendar, say it’s the 14th of April, at least you
know it’s springtime. The next feast
coming up is Pentecost. Do you know why
it’s called Pentecost? It’s not called
that in the Old Testament, it’s called the feast of [not familiar with word] in
the Hebrew. Why is it called
Pentecost? Anybody have an idea from pente? “Pent” is the word for fifty, or
five, and “cost” is simply the Greek word for fifty, and fifty days after a
certain point. Now here’s the mystery,
what the point is. You have a certain
key day, you add fifty, and that gives you the day for Pentecost.
That is why Jesus told the disciples I want you to go to Jerusalem and
wait. He didn’t go into Jerusalem and go
into the upper room and agonize in prayer until God sees how you agonize and
you’ve gone on a diet for a couple of weeks and you’ve twisted your arm and God
feels so sorry for you and how badly you’ve agonized in the closet and He pours
out His Spirit on you. That’s not it at
all. The reason God told the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait is He wanted
them in the city when Pentecost occurred because it was it was in Pentecost…
the Spirit would have come whether the disciples went there or not, it has
nothing to do with agonizing; they didn’t even have to pray once from the time
Jesus told them to go there until the time that Holy Spirit came. Prayer had nothing to do with the giving of
the Holy Spirit, absolutely nothing.
They could have gone out and had parties, been carnal and everything
else and God still would have poured out His Spirit. God’s grace still would
have gone on according to schedule.
The key next time is going to be Pentecost and computing when it
occurs. To compute when it occurs, you
have to find out when X is. X is the
magic number; if you could find out X all you have to do is add fifty and you
get Pentecost. Therefore to find out
when X occurs we want to go to Lev. 23 and the feast that X is. X is the Feast of Firstfruits. We’ve got to determine what day did the
Firstfruits come on, so that once we know this then we can predict what day
Pentecost came on.
So let’s look at verse 9-17 of Lev. 23.
“And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying, [10] Speak unto the children of
Israel, and say unto them, When ye are come into the land which I give unto
you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the
first fruits of your harvest unto the priest. [11] And he shall wave the sheaf
before the LORD, to be accepted for you: on the morrow [next day] after the
sabbath the priest shall wave it.” Now
watch that, that’s an interesting statement, verse 11, let’s read it
again. “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.” So X is a Sabbath
plus one and it’s that day.
Now we have to find out, is that Sabbath a Sabbath on a Saturday, is it
a normal weekly Sabbath or is it one of those special Sabbaths inside this unit
of the Unleavened Bread. It occurred
right in here, here’s the 14th, the 15th, Sabbath
there. Those Sabbaths were solely on the
day of the month. But obviously any
mathematician knows you can have as many as two Sabbaths occurring there
because you’ve got an eight day period which is greater than seven. So you can have one or maybe two Sabbaths
occur in addition to these two Sabbaths.
Do you see what I’m saying? You
can have your normal weekly Sabbath in side that block. Now the question is, what is the Sabbath
that’s used to compute Pentecost? If you
look down you’ll come to verse 15, “and ye shall count unto you from the morrow
after the sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering;
seven sevens shall be complete: [16] Even unto the morrow after the seventh
sabbath shall ye number fifty days.”
Now what have I said? I’ve said
the big problem is to determine is this a weekly Sabbath or is this one of
these special Sabbaths. From what you
read in verses 15-16 what do you think?
Do you think those are monthly Sabbaths, or do you think those Sabbaths
spoken of there are weekly Sabbaths? Do
you think this is the situation… in other words, here we’ve got a Sabbath, the
15th, always a Sabbath, the day after Jesus died. And we have the wave offering on the day
after, which would be the 16th.
If you look at verse 15 it says “And ye shall count unto you from the
morrow after the Sabbath,” which if this is correct would be the 16th,
add fifty, so you count fifty days beyond the 16th and you’ll get
Pentecost. But then it says in verse 16,
“the morrow after the seventh sabbath shall ye number fifty days; and ye shall
offer a new meal offering,” etc.
Now what that says is after you’ve counted fifty days add one. But it says not counting fifty days, it says
count “seven Sabbaths,” are those Sabbaths weekly Sabbaths? They obviously have to be. So if you’re counting weekly Sabbaths you’re
starting point has to be a weekly Sabbath, and therefore your starting point
cannot be the 15th or the 21st, it has to be a Sabbath
that falls inside this gap. Obviously every time it happens, since you have an
eight day period, at least one weekly Sabbath had to fall inside; you always
have to have some Sabbath occurring inside that interval. So you have a Sabbath occurring inside here,
that is the Sabbath of the Firstfruits.
Suppose the Sabbath fell on the 17th. Then the day of the 18th would be
the Firstfruits, so this is the way it would go. 14th Pentecost, 15th
would be the Sabbath geared to the month, then you’d have the 16th,
normal day of celebration, then the 17th would just happen to be a
Saturday, and then the Sunday would be the Firstfruits.
In verse 15 and 16 is one of the keys we have to the computing of
Pentecost. Pentecost is computed by a
weekly system; it has nothing to do with the special Sabbaths of the Feast of
Unleavened Bread. What does this do?
This has interesting implications.
Let’s go down and look at what happened to Jesus Christ. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, and 21, those of
you who love Good Friday, I’m sorry, but here’s the 14th; this is a
day of the month, it is a variable, it could fall on any day of the week. On the week Jesus died, whether it was in 30
AD, I haven’t figured it out, whether it was in 30 AD or 33 AD, but whichever
of those two years, the 14th occurred on a specific day of the
week. How can we guess what day Jesus
died? We don’t have to guess, we can
compute because we know the next day had to be a Sabbath. We know that the
Firstfruits always was a Sunday, because the Firstfruits was the day after the
weekly Sabbath. What does the
Firstfruits speak of? The priest takes a
wave offering; this wave offering was just simply the farmers at that time, and
this is one of the great glories of the Bible, the farmers at that time would
go out into the harvest and they’d pick off the grain of a field and they’d
take a bundle of this grain and present it to the priest; this is the offering
that Yahweh has given us this spring. So
the priest would take this offering, He’d stand before the Lord and evidently
from the Hebrew word he’d wave this before Lord as an offering, and he’d
present it to the Lord giving thanks that God had given this harvest to them.
Now here’s the great mystery. The
day of Firstfruits was computed, if you look back in verse 10, “When ye shall
come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof,
then ye shall bring a sheaf of the first fruits,” does it tell them any
specific day? It only says the day after
a Sabbath. Does it say any particular
Sabbath? There’s no particular Sabbath
there and here is where I have said again and again in the Old Testament, God
controlled the climate. How could they
be sure that the harvest would come just in the week of the Unleavened
Bread? There is only one answer to that
question. How could the Jewish people,
trying to keep this calendar under control, and since Firstfruits was set off
only by the basis it was the first time the farmer would put his cycle into the
harvest, how could they be sure that the harvest would be ready always in that
one week? We live in an agrarian area;
you know that the harvest doesn’t always come exactly at the right time. And here you find it had to come within that
week. How was it guaranteed that the
harvest would be ready? It wasn’t the
works of man; God had to so work it that the climate of Israel would produce
the harvest and it would be ready during that week.
Do I have a verse to support me?
Yes I do. Turn to Jer. 5:24, you
pursue the details of the Word of God, chase them down long enough and you’ll
eventually arrive at blessing. You just
cannot study the Word of God without discovering fantastic truth about how God
works and every detail of the Word of God will lead you to God’s grace and
glory. And all that’s required is a
little patience and a little time. In
Jer. 5:24 what do you find, “Neither say they in their heart, Let us now fear
the LORD, our God, who giveth rain, both the former and the latter, in its
season; he reserveth unto us the appointed weeks of the harvest.” That tells you why the Firstfruits always
occurred here. God manipulated the
climate so that the former rain, which was the spring showers, would come just
at the right time to mature the wheat so that it would be ready for this. You see, this is why the Jews were educated
down through the centuries that they didn’t worship a God out on a hill
somewhere, they didn’t worship a dead God, they worshiped a God that every
spring worked it out so that the exact week of the harvest He told them to
celebrate it would come true, the harvest would be as sure as clockwork, that
God would bring the harvest during that week.
So, we have that God manipulated the climate so the Firstfruits occurred
on a Sunday during this time period. Now
let’s put it all together and apply it to Jesus Christ. The basis of Firstfruits, you have Passover
and Unleavened Bread, the basis of Firstfruits is that it is the first
harvesting of grain. What is the
fulfillment of the Firstfruits? For the
fulfillment of the Firstfruits turn to 1 Cor. 15:50, this is not the verse I
want but this will serve the purpose.
This is talking about the resurrection.
At the resurrection Jesus Christ fulfills the Firstfruits. Jesus Christ is going to rise; Jesus Christ
is called the Firstfruits. Jesus Christ
in the Bible is spoken of as the Firstfruits of what? What was the
harvest? What was it that they brought
to the priest to wave before Him? The
first fruits of grain.
Now at Pentecost they’re going to do the same thing, they’re going to
bring the harvest when it’s complete and bring it to the Lord before His holy
place. What does that tell you about us?
That tells you that the fulfillment of the Firstfruits is the
resurrection of Jesus Christ and what does that tell you about you
personally? It tells you that on
Pentecost something is going to be related to the resurrection, and something,
and we’ll develop that next week, but first fruits is a prediction of the
resurrection, and seven weeks later when the harvest is all in that is God’s
resurrection. [1 Cor. 15:20, “But now is
Christ risen from the dead and become the first fruits of them that slept.”]
Now the first fruits, then look forward to the resurrection of Christ.
When did the first fruits occur? It
occurred late Saturday night, that week that Jesus was crucified, and this is
why I say Jesus Christ was probably crucified on a Wednesday evening, Thursday,
Friday, Saturday, and Saturday evening just before Sunday He rose from the dead;
this Saturday, the 17th of that week was the weekly Sabbath, and it
was fifty days from the 17th that led to the Pentecost when the Holy
Spirit was given. This is how you can
have Jesus in the grave three days and three nights and yet have the day after
He died on the cross as a Sabbath. It
was not a weekly Sabbath, it was a monthly Sabbath.
Therefore these are two feasts that we have worked with, next week we’ll
get into Pentecost and the fulfillment, the basis in the Old Testament, the
fulfillment in the New Testament.