This series of letters was written to my family in order to explain the appointed times of Yehovah in a way that would be (hopefully) easy to understand. My goal is to show how each mo’ed points to Yeshua and God’s plan of redemption. As of mid-February when posting this, I have written half of the essays corresponding to the spring feasts of Israel.
This was written as part of a series of letters to my family explaining the appointed times of Yehovah in a way that would be (hopefully) easy to understand. I will send these letters out on the date of each day in question, to help them understand the Messianic perspective of all the “Jewish” holy days.
It’s been seven weeks (give or take) since my last email. Now is the time for our next mo'ed (do you remember what that means?). Shavuot is a tiny feast, lasting only one day long, but it packs a wallop. If you remember from my last letter, I briefly covered the timeline of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. They painted their doorways in blood the night of the Passover. The next day, they were told to leave. They fled for a week until they reached the Red Sea, which God parted so they could escape Pharaoh forever. To commemorate those events, the first and seventh days of the Feast of Unleavened Bread are holy days, and we are forbidden to work on them. All the people in Israel are supposed to travel to Jerusalem each year for this week-long celebration. It is one of three major feasts that ask us to go to Jerusalem.
The second of those three is Shavuot. Like I said, this one is only a day long, but there is so much depth to it. You probably know of it by another name—Pentecost. This is the holiday mentioned in Acts 2, and we will talk more about that later. First, I’d like to explain the reason why God chose this date to make holy.
Shavuot is the day when God gave Israel the Ten Commandments. More on this later, but that is the first reason why we celebrate it. Jesus said, “The most important [commandment] is, ‘Hear, O Israel: YHVH is our God, YHVH is one. And you shall love YHVH your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” (For the full account, read Mark 12:28-34.) Both of these instructions come out of the Torah (God’s instructions given to us through Moses). If you consider a pyramid, the top of that pyramid are these two commandments. Beneath them is the Ten Commandments. And the rest of the instructions in Exodus through Deuteronomy help us know the specifics of what it means to love God and others. You see, loving God and others is the most important thing we can do in life, but we need the other commandments to explain how to do that. We don’t get to just make it up ourselves.
So what about Pentecost? Why were the disciples in Jerusalem on that day, and did their experience with the tongues of fire have anything to do with Shavuot? Well, they were in Jerusalem because Jesus told them to wait there until God sent his Spirit to them (Acts 1:4-5). But in chapter 2, we see that they were gathered in one place, sitting in a house. Probably in all of our churches, we’ve been told that they were sitting in an upper room, huddled together for fear of the Jews. While it is true that they slept in the upper room of someone’s home in the city, they were not in that house on this day.
In the Old Testament, the Temple is often called the House of God. Every man in Israel was required to be at the Temple on Shavuot, so that is the house where Jesus’ disciples were gathered that particular morning.
Around 9:00 a.m., a rushing wind came down from heaven and filled the Temple. It divided into tongues of fire that rested on each one of the disciples (there were probably over 120 of them there; Acts 1:15). They were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and many of them began speaking in foreign languages. These events have a lot of parallels with the first Shavuot, when God gave Israel the Ten Commandments. In Exodus 19, we read,
“On the morning of the third day there were thunders and lightnings and a thick cloud on the mountain and a very loud trumpet blast, so that all the people in the camp trembled. Then Moses brought the people out of the camp to meet God, and they took their stand at the foot of the mountain. Now Mount Sinai was wrapped in smoke because YHVH had descended on it in fire. The smoke of it went up like the smoke of a kiln, and the whole mountain trembled greatly. And as the sound of the trumpet grew louder and louder, Moses spoke, and God answered him in thunder. YHVH came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain. And YHVH called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.”
Do you notice any similarities? Maybe not, but I will point a few out. This passage mentions a loud trumpet blast. Well the word for trumpet (teruah) can also mean “shouting”. There might have been a trumpet involved, but the Jewish sages have traditionally believed that this was actually a great chorus of voices speaking every language on Earth. They think this because the Bible says over and over that the Torah (instructions of God) are for all the nations, not just Israel. While we can’t be sure that the trumpet was actually all these voices, it does fit as a parallel to the events in Acts.
Next, all of Israel was gathered together. This also happened in Acts, since they were all gathered at the Temple. It also says that fire descended upon the mountain because God was there. Perhaps that’s why there were tongues of fire over the heads of all the disciples.
But the most important connection between the Pentecost in Acts 2 and the Shavuot of Exodus 19 is tied to the Last Supper. As I said in my last email, Jesus used a lot of language related to marriage when speaking with his disciples. There is a reason for this. In Ezekiel 16, God reveals his heart to us in one of the most intimate, raw chapters in the Bible. He’s speaking to Israel, whom he chose as a bride. I won’t paste it here for the sake of length, but I highly recommend you take a few minutes and read it. Don’t read this chapter as God speaking to a nation; rather, read it as a husband speaking to his wife who continually runs off with other men. That is the emotion behind God’s words—deep, raw, earth-shattering pain and heartache.
In Jeremiah 3:8, we reach the conclusion of the story. God finally divorced Israel and sent her away. (By this time, Judah and Israel had divided into two nations, and God refers to them as sisters. He never divorced Judah.) But this creates a problem. God had promised Abraham that his descendants would inherit the land of Canaan forever. If God kicked out ten of the twelve tribes, then he broke his promise to Abraham—a promise which was unconditional. But thankfully, this is not the end of the story by a longshot. In chapter 31, God outlines his plan to restore Israel and keep his promise to Abraham.
“Behold, the days are coming, declares YHVH, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares YHVH. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares YHVH: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know YHVH,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares YHVH. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.”
We see this prophecy of a new covenant that God will make with us. Significantly, this time around, he will write his Torah—his instructions—on our hearts. And THAT is what happened in Acts 2 on Pentecost. The disciples had already accepted Jesus’ proposal at the Last Supper; now God poured out his Holy Spirit on them to write his instructions on their hearts. When he gave the Torah to Moses, he wrote it on tablets of stone. This time, it is written on our hearts.
Does that mean we no longer need to study God’s word? No. But it does mean that if we desire to have a relationship with God, he will help us understand and remember his instructions as we read them, and his Spirit will help us obey them. We can never be perfect in this life because our bodies are full of sin, but his Spirit will lead us in obedience if we truly seek him.
There’s one more important connection between Shavuot in Moses’ day and in Peter’s. Do you remember how, in my last email, I explained the purpose of getting rid of leaven for a week following Passover? If you recall, leaven is a soupy mixture of water and flour that is beginning to ferment. You mix a little bit into bread dough, and the yeast in the leaven will cause the dough to rise. During the week of Unleavened Bread, we are forbidden to eat anything with leaven, in order to remember Israel’s flight from Egypt to the Red Sea. Also, you may recall that on the first Sunday after Passover, the high priest goes into the field and cuts down the firstfruits of barley. I didn’t go into a lot of detail, but he returns to the temple and bakes this into two flatbread cakes, which he offers to God. After this, the rest of Israel can begin their barley harvest.
As they begin harvesting their grain, they prepare a new batch of leaven that will last them an entire year. If the old leaven represents sin, pride, and false teachings, the new leaven represents being filled with God’s word. Over time, our sin can corrupt his word in us—that’s why this mo'ed is so important. It’s a time for us to throw out all of the sins and bad habits that have grown in the past year and return to God’s word.
Anyway, after 50 days (seven weeks), we come to Shavuot. On this Sunday morning, the high priest takes two loaves of leavened bread and offers them to God. This is the only time of the year where God accepts leavened loaves, because they represent a life that is filled with his word rather than sin. And this is where this feast ties into the Last Supper.
At the Last Supper, Jesus broke a loaf of leavened bread. He said, “This is my body.” Well if you read any of Paul’s letters, he often calls Christians the “body of the Messiah”. Those two loaves offered on Shavuot—the day when the Holy Spirit anointed the disciples in the Temple—represent the new body of the Messiah, free from the sin that cursed us! When I realized this the first time, it utterly blew my mind. Paul talks about us being a “new creation”; well this Tale of Two Breads is the perfect illustration of that!
We aren’t yet in the New Covenant. The Last Supper was the proposal, and we ought to remember it every time we eat bread and drink wine together (it does not have to be in church during Communion). In a few weeks, we’ll pick this study up again to see how the whole thing wraps up. There are four more mo'adim to cover. I hope you’ll join me.
This was written as part of a series of letters to my family explaining the appointed times of Yehovah in a way that would be (hopefully) easy to understand. I will send these letters out on the date of each day in question, to help them understand the Messianic perspective of all the “Jewish” holy days.
The first mo'ed I would like to discuss with you is, ironically, the only one which does not have a specific date on God’s calendar. The Sabbath day (or Resting day) is a weekly event that corresponds to our Saturday. (While you might have never considered why it is on Saturday, we know that this is true because Jesus kept the Sabbath on Saturday, and the Western world has kept the same seven-day cycle since before Jesus was even born.)
You’ve no doubt heard of the Sabbath many, many times growing up in church. If your church has the Ten Commandments on display, you may know the Fourth Commandment by heart: “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” This is found in Exodus 20:8-11,
“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to YHVH your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days YHVH made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore YHVH blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy.”
This verse clearly lays out the reason for keeping the Sabbath—to memorialize God’s work as our Creator.
I think by now most of you have visited the Ark Encounter and the Creation Museum. While I don’t know what each of you believes, my hope is that your visits to those places have convinced you of the Bible’s story of Creation, which we can read in Genesis 1:1-2:3. We see in those verses that God created the universe over a series of six days, and he set aside the seventh day as a day of resting. Why does God need to rest? you might ask. Of course God doesn’t need to rest, but he chose to do so. It is a way for him to set apart a day as holy. What does it mean to be holy? Holiness is just a word meaning “set apart”. In other words, my statement in the line above is redundant.
If you read the Old Testament, you will come across the terms “holy” and “profane” (or something similar). If something is “profane”, it is common or ordinary. If something is “holy”, it is set apart. God has created many profane (ordinary) things, but there are certain things which he has set apart as holy or sacred. There may be nothing obviously better about whatever thing God deems holy, but the very fact of setting it apart means it is important to him—and should be to us.
God has called us, his people, to be holy as he is holy (1 Peter 1:16). Peter quotes that verse from the Law of Moses, wherein God says five times that we are to be holy. If we are to be set apart for God, then we should pay close attention to the things which God tells us are set apart. The rest of the world can wallow in its profanity, but we have a higher calling—to be holy as our God is holy. Concerning the Sabbath, there are at least seven reasons why we should still observe this instruction today.
God says it is a sign of his eternal covenant with us (Exodus 31:16). When we choose to keep his Sabbaths, we are aligning ourselves with his program. Consider this: There are seven days in a week. But if you work all seven days, then effectively there is no more week, since you work every single day without stop. Sure, you can probably make more money doing that, but God created us to need a day of resting. Now many Christians believe that Sunday (the first day) has replaced Saturday as the Sabbath. The Bible never says this, though. In fact, the Roman Catholic Church takes full credit for changing the Bible on this matter. Although it is up to you what you do, and I won’t look down on anyone for their choices, I would encourage you to consider if the Bible authorizes Church leaders to change God’s instructions.
Since the Sabbath is a day to remember Creation, we are declaring God the Creator by keeping it (Exodus 20:11). When we keep the Sabbath, we are proclaiming by our actions that YHVH God is the Creator of the universe. In a world that is immersed in Darwinian evolution and a universe that is supposedly over fourteen billion years old, this is a powerful testimony to the world.
God takes the Sabbath seriously. Take a moment and go to BibleGateway.com. Search for “profane Sabbath”. What you read may surprise you. Now I am not trying to scare you or shame you. I don’t want to hurt anyone by what I write. My goal is to encourage you to take stock of your life. We do the best we can. God is our Father; he loves us and wants to see us try. He knows we can’t do everything perfectly, but he enjoys seeing us try. I only want to encourage you to try.
Jesus and the Apostles kept the Sabbath. I could give dozens of references, but you can see for yourself by reading the Gospels and the Book of Acts. Most of Jesus’ and Paul’s sermons took place on the Sabbath, and all early Christians met in the Jewish synagogues on the Sabbath until non-believing Jews pushed them out. Even then, it wasn’t until a.d. 321 when the pseudo-Christian Emperor Constantine declared the first day of the week to be the “venerable day of the sun”, in honor of the god Sol Invictus, whom he appeared to think was Jesus by another name. Until the time of Constantine, nearly all Christians still worshiped on Saturday.
The Sabbath will continue throughout the reign of Jesus on Earth and into the New Creation. Isaiah 66 is about the New Creation. In verse 23, we read, “From new moon to new moon, and from Sabbath to Sabbath, all flesh will come to worship before me, declares YHVH.” The context of this verse is after God has destroyed this present Creation and has created a New Heaven and New Earth.
The Sabbath day gives us an amazing glimpse into God’s prophetic timeline regarding the return of Jesus. This point is a little speculative, but I believe it is true. In chapter 2 Peter 3, Peter tells us not to be concerned about how long it’s taking for Jesus to return. The early Christians believed they would be alive when Jesus returned. This is clear from reading their writings in the New Testament. They clearly expected the Messiah to return within their lifetimes. It has now been 2,000 years, and obviously Jesus hasn’t returned yet. While Peter didn’t know when the Lord would return, he had the wisdom to warn us not to be anxious about it, and encourage us that Jesus will return to bring God’s judgment—and our salvation. Just because God is patient with humanity doesn’t mean he won’t eventually judge us. Peter writes, “But do not overlook this one fact, beloved, that with YHVH one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). While this likely went right over the heads of his audience, it is very significant to us. I’ll explain why in the next point so we have seven altogether. 😉
The seven-day week is a prophetic picture of the entire timeline of this present age. The verse in 2 Peter 3 is key to understanding this. Whether or not Peter realized what he was saying, I believe that we can interpret his words to mean that God has established a 7,000-year timeline for this Creation. Besides 2 Peter 3:8, there are four other corroborating passages for this hypothesis.
Revelation 20:2,3,4,5,6,7. I separated these because each verse mentions that the reign of Jesus on Earth will be for one thousand years.
Hebrews 4:1-10. This passage describes a future Sabbath rest that believers may enter. When considered alongside Revelation 20:2-7, it appears that the author of Hebrews is referencing the same event.
Malachi 4:2. This verse describes the “sun of righteousness” coming with healing in his wings (literally: fringes, or tzitzit; the blue strings that I wear). The Jewish people rightly understood the “sun of righteousness” to be a Messianic title. Furthermore, they deduced that since the sun was created on the fourth day, the Messiah would come around the 4,000th year. That is exactly what happened. Jesus was born around the beginning of the year 4000 from Creation. He even came with healing in his tzitzit, as we see in Luke 8:43-48. In fact, the Jewish leaders were so sure that this was a Messianic prophecy, they took out 230 years from their histories to make it look like Jesus came too early to be the Messiah!
Hosea 6:1-2. This verse is quite intriguing. It is speaking for Israel, and she says, “Come, let us return to YHVH; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” It makes little sense if taken at face value, but if we understand 1 day = 1,000 years, it makes perfect sense! After the resurrection of Jesus, God allowed his temple to be destroyed and the Jewish people to be scattered. He did this in order to bring in the “multitude of the nations” (Genesis 48:19; Romans 11:25). God hasn’t abandoned Judah (the Jews), but for the past 2,000 years, his focus has been on the Gentiles. Near the end of 2,000 years, God has returned his sights to Judah. The present-day nation of Israel only represents about 25% of the true people of Israel; the rest of Israel is still dispersed. But after two “days”, God has raised up Judah, just as he promised through Hosea.
I don’t want to wax any longer than this. It is my hope that you will read these things and take them to heart. So I will close with this promise concerning the Sabbath:
“Thus says YHVH: ‘Keep justice, and do righteousness, for soon my salvation [yeshuah] will come, and my righteousness be revealed. Blessed is the man who does this, and the son of man who holds it fast, who keeps the Sabbath, not profaning it, and keeps his hand from doing any evil. … And the foreigners [Gentiles] who join themselves to YHVH, to minister to him, to love the name of YHVH, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.’”—Isaiah 56:1-2,6-7
