The Jewish Feast Days (Numbers 28-29)

Okay, go ahead and open up to the book of Numbers. Tonight, we're gonna be looking at chapters 28 and 29, or at least our study is gonna be based on some of the things mentioned in 28 and 29. So before we play the video, let's open in prayer.

Heavenly Father, again, we come before you in your house and gathering together to look at your word and just be thankful for the way you've led us this week and provided for all of our needs. And Lord, I just ask that you would bless each heart as we look at this subject of the Jewish feasts and their significance, not only to them, but how they are also prophetic and significant to the New Testament church.

So Lord, may your spirit move this evening, illuminate your word, I pray in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So we're just gonna play a short snippet from chapter 28. So this will be verses 16 through 31.

On the 14th day of the first month is the Passover of the Lord. And on the 15th day of this month is the feast. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. On the first day, you shall have a holy convocation.

You shall do no customary work and you shall present an offering made by fire as a burnt offering to the Lord. Two young bulls, one ram, and seven lambs in their first year. Be sure they are without blemish.

Their grain offering shall be a fine flour mixed with oil, three-tenths of an ephah you shall offer for a bull and two-tenths for a ram. You shall offer one-tenth of an ephah for each of the seven lambs.

Also, one goat as a sin offering to make atonement for you. You shall offer these besides the burnt offering of the morning, which is for a regular burnt offering. In this manner, you shall offer the food of the offering made by fire daily for seven days as a sweet aroma to the Lord.

It shall be offered besides the regular burnt offering and its drink offering. And on the seventh day, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work. Also, on the day of the first fruits, when you bring a new grain offering to the Lord at your feast of weeks, you shall have a holy convocation.

You shall do no customary work. You shall present a burnt offering as a sweet aroma to the Lord. Two young bulls, one ram, and seven lambs in their first year with their grain offering of fine flour mixed with oil.

Three-tenths of an ephah for each bull, two-tenths for the one ram, and one-tenth for each of the seven lambs. Also, one kid of the goats to make atonement for you. Be sure they are without blemish.

You shall present them with their drink offerings besides the regular burnt offering with its grain offering.

All right, and this will transfer over to a chart that will list the seven feast days. All right, can everyone see that?

Okay.

The Seven Jewish Feasts as Prophetic Pictures of Christ

Tonight, we're going to cover Numbers chapters 28 and 29, or again, our study will be based on some of the content in these chapters, but we're going to take this opportunity to give a brief overview of the seven Jewish feasts and how they, as you may have guessed, how they point to Christ.

So not all the feasts are mentioned here in the book of Numbers, but I thought this was a good time as any to go over them because I don't think we've done that. I don't think I've ever done a sermon or Sunday school class or anything on this topic, so I thought it'd be good.

So we're going to be looking at the Feast of Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread, the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks, also called what? Pentecost. These are the four spring feasts followed by the three fall feasts.

So that's the Feast of Trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and then finally the Feast of Tabernacles, but of course, you can see that the Jews do have different names for them, but we'll cover all of that.

Just to get an idea of what's happening in Numbers chapter 28, let me kind of lay the groundwork by saying this. As Americans, we're all familiar with our holidays and our customs, and historically, we have sort of known what each holiday, what is expected of us and the things that we do, and we would all participate, and these are the things that bind a nation together.

I mean, every country and every culture needs holidays and customs to bring people together, and that's basically what's happening here. Of course, we were one nation under God. We would say that. Children of Israel, same thing.

They're God's people. Of course, our nation always had problems. Every nation does. If there's one thing we've learned from studying the book of Numbers, the children of Israel had problems, right? But they're still God's people.

So despite their failures, they're still God's people, and to some degree, it was their holidays or feast days and their practices that really gave the structure to the nation to hold it all together.

So chapter 28 covers the daily offerings, verses one through eight, the Sabbath offerings, verses nine and 10, the monthly offerings, verses 11 through 15, the offerings at Passover, that's verses 16 through 25, and then the offerings for the Feast of Weeks in verses 26 through 31.

There's bound to be somebody, if you're just reading through, maybe you did this for your yearly Bible reading and you have that chart or you just go through so many chapters a day, and you get to Numbers and you're reading the feasts and you might have the thought that, what relevance does this have to my life or to the life of the New Testament church?

But what have we learned? God's word, there's always relevance because the whole of the Old Testament points ahead to Christ and speaks of Christ. So it's just a matter of figuring it out. So the book of Numbers is a book of what?

There are the Psalms and poetry, there's prophecy. Numbers is part of the? No, it's not the historical books. It's the law, right? This is God's law. When we think of God's law, we think of sometimes the 10 commandments or the individual 613 laws, but Genesis through Deuteronomy, this is part of God's law.

So this is very relevant for them. They needed to know this, their nation revolved around it, but it's also relevant to us because it speaks of Christ. John 539, Jesus said, "'You search the scriptures, "'for in them you think you have eternal life, "'but these are they that testify of me.'".

In other words, the Old Testament testifies or speaks of me. So that's what we know, that the feasts somehow point ahead to Christ. And you can see the Passover represents a sacrificial death. The Feast of Unleavened Bread, some would say represents his burial.

The Feast of Firstfruits would represent his resurrection. Pentecost, the giving of the Holy Spirit. Rosh Hashanah or the Feast of Trumpets would talk about what? His coming at the rapture. Yom Kippur, this would be the Day of Atonement.

This speaks of his second advent to the earth. And once he's here on earth, that's the kingdom age. So that's the Feast of Tabernacles. So we're gonna explain how all of these point ahead to Christ. All right, let's turn to, well, let's look at Numbers 28, 16, and 17 for a moment.

It says, on the 14th day of the first month, it is the Passover of the Lord. And on the 15th day of this month is the Feast. Unleavened bread shall be eaten for seven days. All right, now let's go back to Exodus chapter 12.

Turn to Exodus 12. So the Passover begins the Feast of Unleavened Bread. And if there's any feast that clearly points ahead to Christ and his work, the Passover is the most obvious example of that. When we were in Exodus 12, we talked about this already, but since we're going through the Feasts again, look at Exodus 12, starting in verse 12.

The Lord says, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beasts. And against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment.

I am the Lord. Now, the blood shall be assigned for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you. And the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.

So any believer, we would say anyone who's under the blood, you know, God's judgment passes over, right? Look at verse 14. So this day shall be to you a memorial and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations.

And it continues.

So in the preceding verses, the people were instructed to take a lamb. They were to kill the lamb, take the blood and put it on their doorposts, on one side, on the other side, and then up above. And you could sort of see how that motion, you know, forms the cross or the wounds of Christ on the cross with his hands on either side and then the crown of thorns.

So I think you can see that pretty clearly. The Passover lamb was killed. And you remember what John the Baptist said in John 1, 29. What did he say when he saw Jesus? Behold, the lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

First Peter 1, 18 and 19 speaks about how we are redeemed by what? The precious blood of Christ as a lamb without spot or blemish. So this is so very clear how the Passover pictures Christ. And what work does it picture?

The lamb dies, right?

So it pictures his death on the cross. Any questions about that or any comments? All right, and just as the Passover marked the Hebrews release from slavery in Egypt, we would say the death of Christ marks our release from the slavery of sin.

So now let's move on to the second feast, the feast of unleavened bread. But everyone sees how the Passover points to Christ. Okay, that one's simple. Unleavened bread is connected, this feast is connected to the Passover.

And you could say that the feast of unleavened bread, the first thing that came to my mind is that it pictures Christ in his sinless life because leaven is a picture of?

Sin.

Sin, right? Usually, not always, but usually in the Bible, leaven or yeast represents sin. Look at Exodus 12, 15, if you're still there. He says, seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day, you shall remove leaven from your houses.

For whoever eats leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. God takes this very seriously, doesn't he? You know, I don't wanna make a big thing about this, but I think when churches celebrate communion, I think we should use unleavened bread because leaven in the bread is a picture of sin and God makes it very clear to the Israelites, make sure it's not even in your house.

So I know the common attitude today is, oh, you know, what difference does it make? What if the Jews had that attitude? Oh, I know God said that, but what difference does it make? I don't think it would have gone too well.

Yeah, so the point is when there's a clear command like that, clear instructions, I think we should just listen to it. Okay, let's turn to 1 Corinthians chapter five. But as you can see with the chart, the claim is that the feast of unleavened bread, it doesn't just speak of Christ and his sinless life, it actually points to his burial.

How would that be?

Does anyone wanna, I mean, it's sort of mentioned here on the screen. Leaven is seen, if it's sin, it's a corrupting influence, right? So when Jesus, his body was put into the tomb, normally a body after three days would begin to decay, but God did not allow his body, Jesus's body to do that.

So Passover represents his death on the cross, the feast of unleavened bread can point to his burial. 1 Corinthians chapter five, verse six, Paul says about the leaven, your glorying is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Therefore purge out the old leaven that you may be a new lump since you truly are unleavened for indeed Christ, our Passover. So you can see Jesus is called our Passover. He was sanctified for us. Therefore, let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

So when we take communion, more important than whether the bread has leaven in it or not, more important is that we approach the Lord's table with a clean heart, right, and a clear conscience. So the application for us, a little leaven leavens the whole lump, the application is that we, as we grow in Christ, we get the sin, they got the sin out of their house, we get the sin out of our life.

All right, so the feast of unleavened bread can point to a sinless life and the fact that his body, the Lord did not allow his body to see corruption. Continuing on, go back to Numbers chapter 28. The next feast that we're gonna look at is the feast of first fruits, which then will lead into the feast of weeks.

So the feast of first fruit or first fruits took place right around the time of the Passover and it coincided with the barley harvest. This points to the Messiah's resurrection. Anyone know a connection with the resurrection, why this would point ahead to that?

All right, a few verses come to mind. John 12, 24, Jesus said, "'Most assuredly, I say to you, "'unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, "'it remains alone, but if it dies, it produces much grain.'".

Of course, he's talking about his resurrection. And then in 1 Corinthians 15, 20, Paul says that Jesus is the first fruits of those who are asleep. He's the first one to be resurrected. He's the first fruits.

We agree with that, right? Jesus is the first man to ever be resurrected. Now, there were people raised from the dead,.

But they died again.

Jesus is resurrected never to die again. So he is the first, the first first fruits. The Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, we're moving now to the Feast of Weeks. So Pentecost means 50 and the Feast of Weeks, well, we're talking about how many weeks, who knows?

All right, so hey, we're getting deep. You guys don't, you usually have all the answers. So it's good that we're studying this. So yeah, Pentecost means 50 or 50th. And then it's so many weeks after the Passover.

Numbers 28, verse 26 says, "'Also on the day of the first fruits, when you bring a new grain offering to the Lord at your Feast of Weeks, you shall have a holy convocation and you shall do no customary work.'".

So this is seven full weeks or 50 days after the Feast of First Fruits or right around the Passover. There's the first harvest. If you think about what happened when the Jews or the Israelites celebrated the Passover, what did they do next?

They left Egypt, right? And 50 days later, they came to Mount Sinai. And it's at Mount Sinai where they officially became a nation. So the tie-in is when Jesus gave the Holy Spirit, that happened on what day?

On Pentecost. So just as Israel became a nation at Mount Sinai, this, we would say the church officially became the church. It's like the church's birthday on Pentecost. So the Feast of Pentecost is tied in with the giving of the Holy Spirit.

And there was a great harvest on the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter two, because Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit. He preached and how many souls? Is it 3 ,000? I think there's three, right?

Yeah.

So you see the harvest and the giving of the Spirit, birthday of Israel, birthday of the church. So hopefully this kind of shows you that, yeah, you can be reading through Leviticus and Numbers and think, you know, why do I need to know this?

Because it all points ahead to Jesus. And there are things to be learned if we just kind of stop and do the work. All right, now we're gonna get into the fall feast. So we've looked at the first four that were in the spring.

Now we're gonna look at some of the fall feasts. Three out of the seven, we believe, are yet to be fulfilled. You see here how Passover was fulfilled. How is it fulfilled? Jesus on the cross, right? So Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and the Feast of Tabernacles, here it says future.

So these have not been fulfilled. So spring feasts speak of Christ's first coming. Fall feasts speak of his second coming, or his second advent. How many of you have heard something like this before? Like this is sort of familiar.

How many of you have never, never heard anything on this?

Okay, all right.

So look at Numbers 29, verse one says, and in the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work. For you, it is a day of blowing the trumpets.

So we would call it the Feast of Trumpets, but Jews today call it Rosh Hashanah. What does Rosh Hashanah mean? Well, it's actually like, basically it's the Jewish new year. So this is a holiday that we have, that we celebrate the new year, January 1st.

This is basically their new year based on their calendar. So this points ahead, we believe, to Jesus coming at the rapture. I think one reason people haven't heard this is because if you are a millennial or post-millennial and you don't believe in a rapture of the church, obviously you can't do this.

This doesn't work for you because you don't believe that stuff. So you have to be pre-millennial in order to see the significance here. So how does this point ahead to the rapture? Feast of Trumpets, rapture of the church.

How does it fit? Because when Jesus comes at the rapture, what happens?

Trumpets.

Yeah, the trump shall sound, right? Isn't that what is said? 1 Thessalonians 4, 16, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 52. When Jesus comes, the trumpet shall sound. All right, so we can see hopefully how that points ahead to the rapture of the church.

Next, we're gonna look at the Day of Atonement. The Day of Atonement. That's called what by the Jews today?

Yom Kippur.

Yom Kippur.

I think a lot of you know that the word for day is yom. I think we talked about that in the sermon from Genesis 2. So yom is day. So the Day of Atonement is Yom Kippur. The offerings that are to be made are laid out in Numbers 29, seven through 11.

And what did they do? Of course, the Jews, they would offer sacrifices on the Day of Atonement, right? Animal sacrifices, but did that blood ever take away sin? No, it kind of covered things until next time.

It didn't fully take away sin. What was necessary for the removal of sin?

Christ's blood.

Right, Christ's blood. So Hebrews 9, verse 12, talks about how Christ offered himself. It says, not with the blood of goats and calves, but with his own blood, he entered the most holy place once for all.

So it's a better sacrifice. Not only does it take away sin forever, he doesn't have to die again. And we don't have to continually go through something again and again and again to be forgiven. It's once for all having obtained eternal redemption.

So many believe that this feast day, the Day of Atonement, it prophetically points ahead to the second coming of Jesus. That's when he comes and fights the battle of Armageddon because what happens on that day?

This is the salvation of Israel, right? Romans chapter 11, verse 26 says, and so all Israel will be saved. Is all Israel saved right now? No, far from it. And it's gonna take the tribulation period to kind of wake them up.

And there's gonna be that revival through the ministry of the 144 ,000 and the two witnesses. So during the tribulation, that's when the Jews start converting to Christ on mass. And then when Jesus actually comes in the clouds, they see him whom they pierced and atonement is made, so to speak.

And Israel, all Israel will be saved. That doesn't happen at the rapture of the church. That happened seven years later at the second advent. So can you see the tie in with the Day of Atonement and the second advent?

Okay.

So the Feast of Trumpets points to the rapture, the Day of Atonement, to the second advent. And now this fits in very nicely because once Jesus is here, now this is the Feast of Tabernacles. What's a tabernacle?

It is a tent. So this feast is also called the Feast of Booths, right? So basically you're erecting a tent. During the millennium, Jesus actually dwells with his people. That's the symbolism. So the seventh and final feast is the Feast of Tabernacles.

This is covered in Numbers 29, 12 through 40. And as we, you say, well, how does that tie in? Because we've been seeing through the Old Testament that God tabernacled with his people. The tabernacle was a sign of God's presence among the children of Israel, right?

So the day is coming when Christ physically returns to dwell with his brethren during the kingdom age. This is also tied in to an event in the Gospels. In the end or at the end of Matthew 16, Jesus told his disciples, some of you will not die until you see me coming in my kingdom or something to that effect or coming with my royal splendor.

And you remember what happens immediately next in chapter 17? Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, right? And when Jesus is transfigured on the mountain, Elijah and Moses show up and Peter, he doesn't know what to do.

What does he say? Yeah, we should set up some booths. We should set up some tents and stay here a while. Peter wanted to enjoy being in the presence of Christ and his glory. So that's the tie-in that during the kingdom age, Jesus is going to be reigning on earth in his royal splendor.

And they're gonna be able to go to Jerusalem and dwell with him. And it's not gonna have to be a short-term thing. God is gonna, or the Lord is gonna dwell with his people for how long? A thousand, thousand years.

So hopefully this helps us to see how all of these Jewish feasts are prophetic and speak ahead or point ahead to the Lord's work. So in conclusion, these feasts were central to the nation of Israel. These are the things that really bound the nation together.

And they all prophetically pointed ahead to Christ, who unites us. He's the head of the church. We are united. The church is united in Christ, who Peter calls a spiritual nation. So I'm just gonna close with his words in 1 Peter 2, 9 through 10.

But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, his own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light, who were once, or who once were not a people, but are now the people of God, would not obtain mercy, but now have obtained mercy.