Leviticus 23LEV 23
The feasts of the Lord were the gathering of the people around Himself. In the Old Testament, God was teaching His people the letters, we may say; now, He is teaching us to put them together. And if you put them together, however you please, they always spell "Christ.”
The first feast is the Lord's Passover. In order to understand the Passover we need to read Exodus 12. The children of Israel were in bondage in Egypt. They were the people descended from Abraham, and heirs of the covenant. But they are in Egypt, sunken to as tow a level as the Egyptians themselves, and deserving the judgment of God for their sins as much as the Egyptians, when God heard their cry of oppression. He came down to deliver them, and one plague after another plague was sent upon the land of Egypt to show the power of God, and that the Egyptians had to do with God until the last plague, the tenth, and that was the death of the firstborn.
God told the people to take a lamb on the tenth day of the first month. They were to keep it up until the fourteenth day of the first month and kill the lamb at evening. Then they were to take the blood and dip hyssop in the blood and sprinkle the side posts of their doors and the lintel overhead. They were to stay inside the house that night. God's word was pledged for it that where the blood was upon the door, He would pass over them and the plagues should not be on them to destroy them when He judged the land of Egypt.
That was called the Lord's Passover. He passed over the children of Israel that night wherever the blood was sprinkled on the door posts, but where it was not found on the door posts there death was.
The firstborn of all in Egypt, from the king on the throne to the beggar on the dunghill, man and beast, the firstborn was slain, except where the blood was. And, of course, the significance of that is that for us—Christ being our Passover—we were in the sphere of judgment and deserving the judgment, and having been sheltered by the good of Christ, judgment never can touch us.
This event took place in the land of Egypt, but it was to be celebrated every year at that period as a memorial feast. "In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord's Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein" (Lev. 23:5-75In the fourteenth day of the first month at even is the Lord's passover. 6And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread unto the Lord: seven days ye must eat unleavened bread. 7In the first day ye shall have an holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein. (Leviticus 23:5‑7)). It is a very serious feast and a very solemn one.
There are three main feasts in Deuteronomy 16: (1) the Passover, or unleavened bread which is in connection with it; (2) Pentecost, or the feast of weeks; and (3) the feast of tabernacles. There is rejoicing in connection with the feast of weeks, and there is rejoicing greatly in connection with the feast. of tabernacles, but not one word of rejoicing in the Feast of unleavened bread or the Passover. They are connected here.
Notice in Deuteronomy 16:1-91Observe the month of Abib, and keep 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. 2Thou 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. 3Thou shalt eat no leavened bread with it; seven days shalt thou eat unleavened bread therewith, even the bread of affliction; for thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt in haste: that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. 4And there shall be no leavened bread seen with thee in all thy coast seven days; neither shall there any thing of the flesh, which thou sacrificedst the first day at even, remain all night until the morning. 5Thou mayest not sacrifice the passover within any of thy gates, which the Lord thy God giveth thee: 6But at the place which the Lord thy God shall choose to place his name in, there thou shalt sacrifice the passover at even, at the going down of the sun, at the season that thou camest forth out of Egypt. 7And 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. 8Six 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. 9Seven weeks shalt thou number unto thee: begin to number the seven weeks from such time as thou beginnest to put the sickle to the corn. (Deuteronomy 16:1‑9) that not one word is said of joy or rejoicing. It is more to be noticed because of what you read of the feast of weeks in verse 11, "Thou shalt rejoice.” There is a beautiful principle furnished us with regard to the feast of weeks. Not only, "Thou shat t rejoice," but everyone around us is to rejoice too. God's way never teaches selfishness, but enlarges the heart toward every needy one. The widow, fatherless, Levites, servants and everybody are all to be brought into this rejoicing.
In Deuteronomy 16:43-14 it says, "Thou shalt observe the feast of tabernacles seven days... and thou shalt rejoice in thy feast." And then again in verse 15, "Therefore thou shalt surely rejoice." When you come to the feast of tabernacles, it will be all rejoicing.
The feast of the pass-over brings before us the solemn truth of God's righteous claims upon His creatures on account of their sins being answered for, but answered by the death of Christ, the blood of Christ our Passover. What comes next here is Pentecost, but in Leviticus 23 there is something before this.
Pentecost carries us on to the consequence of Christ's death—His work—the giving of the Holy Spirit; that, of course, brings joy to the heart and so there is rejoicing in the feast of weeks. That is peculiar to this present time, and the gathering out of the church. You cannot tell what month this was. It was to be fifty days from the time they waved the sheaf of firstfruits. But the moment the church is completed God begins again to reckon time, and on the fifteenth day of the seventh month began the feast of tabernacles. That will be commemorative of all the wanderings of God's people when strangers and pilgrims. It cannot be celebrated until their pilgrimage is all over, and they are settled and established in full blessing in accordance with the purpose of God. And so it will be all rejoicing; it will be what we call the millennium.
The Passover does not carry us beyond the death of Christ, not even to the resurrection. In Leviticus 23:10-1110Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: 11And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. (Leviticus 23:10‑11) it says, "When ye be come into the land which I give unto you, and shall reap the harvest thereof, then ye shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest unto the priest: 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." It could not be waved before the Lord any other day but the morrow after the Sabbath.
If we let the light of 1 Corinthians 15 shine back here it just illuminates this whole statement. "But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept" (vs. 20). There is the anti-type. "The firstfruits of them that slept." You see, casting the seed into the ground, it dies and springs up and bears its fruit, and that is a new crop. When the harvest was ready, the reapers reaped the first sheaf.
Suppose it was Wednesday when they reaped it. They kept that sheaf until the morrow after the Sabbath. What day would that be? The first day of the week. If they reaped it on Friday, they kept it until the first day of the week, and then the priest was to wave it, because it was a type of the resurrection of Christ, that was to take place on the first day of the week—the morrow after the Sabbath. That was given by God to His people nearly 1500 years before Christ died, but was there ever-present to God's mind. How establishing that is to the soul!
You see what we have in the Word of God. As the Lord said, "The scripture cannot be broken." Men will break their heads on it, but the Scriptures cannot be broken, and here you find it actually carried out to the very letter. So we get Christ's death in the Passover and Christ risen on the first day of the week— the morrow after the Sabbath—in the wave sheaf explained in Corinthians, "Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." Everyone, that is all believers in Him, is a part of that harvest, and every one of us through grace comes in as a part of that crop, of which Christ is the firstfruits.
Notice that in the offerings, which accompany this wave sheaf, you look in vain to find a sin offering. You can find a burnt offering, a meat offering and a drink offering, but no sin offering, for there was no sin in Him. He needed no sin offering. This shows all the more strikingly how carefully the Spirit of God guards the truth of His holy Person.
"And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord. And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savor: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings" (Lev. 23:12-1412And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf an he lamb without blemish of the first year for a burnt offering unto the Lord. 13And the meat offering thereof shall be two tenth deals of fine flour mingled with oil, an offering made by fire unto the Lord for a sweet savor: and the drink offering thereof shall be of wine, the fourth part of an hin. 14And ye shall eat neither bread, nor parched corn, nor green ears, until the selfsame day that ye have brought an offering unto your God: it shall be a statute for ever throughout your generations in all your dwellings. (Leviticus 23:12‑14)).
It would have been a sin for them to have touched or eaten anything of that crop until the wave sheaf had been presented to the Lord. God must have His part first.
It is important in looking into these passages to see that none but God could have given such an account. Who else could have done that? It shows what a wonderful thing we have in the Word of God. He could see beforehand what has to be 1500 years later. Moses did not understand it, and nobody could understand it until its accomplishment, and the light of the New Testament shines back and fills it with illumination. Then we see whose mind it was that dictated Leviticus and Corinthians. It was one mind running through the whole.
In Luke 6 the Pharisees thought it an awful sin for the disciples to pluck the corn and eat of it on the Sabbath. But the Spirit of God guards this by telling us it was the second Sabbath after the first. The first having past, on the morrow after the first the wave sheaf had been waved before the Lord, and on the second after the first it was no harm for them to take the corn. But had they taken it on the first, it would have been a sin. For them to take of the fruit of the soil before God had His share would have been sin, because it would have been ignoring His rights. The Pharisees were following the tradition of the elders.
The feast of unleavened bread, immediately follows the Passover. What lesson are we to learn from that?
From 1 Corinthians 5, the church is looked at as keeping the feast of unleavened bread, and the reason given is: "For even Christ our Passover is sacrificed for us: 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." Leaven typifies what is evil—what puffs up and corrupts. It is always evil wherever it is spoken of in Scripture, and it is to be excluded.
The Christian who is under the shelter of the blood of Christ is to pass his whole life on earth with leaven put away.
Among the Jews there is a great searching of the house just before the Passover. Everything has to be purged out for fear a little leaven will be found in their dwelling. The teaching is that as leaven typifies evil, the Christian is to put away evil. The church is to exclude all evil and thus keep the feast with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
There is no space between Passover feast and the feast of unleavened bread, so that it is the whole of the life from the time we are under the shelter of the blood of Christ until our week is ended or completed. Seven is a perfect number—completeness in spiritual things—therefore it is the whole period of our sojourn upon earth. It is the holiness that becomes the people of God that is set forth by the feast of unleavened bread
Leaven is always evil, but there are a great many classes in Scripture connected with bad conduct and immorality. Fornication in Corinthians is called leaven, and in Galatians false teaching. The Lord warned His disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees. They were wrong in supposing it was because they had taken no bread. When He reproves them, they understand He spoke of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees. There is danger of Christians getting occupied with a certain class of leaven, so it is important to see we have different classes in Scripture.
There is a lesson for us to learn from the woman introducing leaven in the meal. She was hiding it; it was not a straightforward course. She hid the leaven in the three measures of meal, and she hid it there until the whole was leavened. There is not a woman who, if she made bread, would do that. As soon as it became a little leavened she would put it in the oven to stop its working. When we think of the three measures of meal as the children's food, it was wicked for that woman to hide leaven in it until what ought to be food is poison—corrupted. To eat of it would bring on sickness and perhaps death.
Woman, too, is used in Scripture in that way as a picture of a system. You get a woman very prominently displayed in connection with the false church. That is what is meant in Matthew 13. That evil system has grown up and finds its fullest expression in Romanism that has put leaven into the food of God's children. The Church of Rome will tell you it is by Christ's death you are to be saved. That is truth. But how am Ito get it? They will say it is dependent upon the sacraments and the priests. That puts something between me and God and puts me at a distance, and there is where the leaven is put into the truth and spoiled. It makes my faith in the priest and what he does, instead of Christ and what He has done.
Why does it say three measures? Because He wants to give us a picture expressive of what Christ is. I connect it with the fact that God has revealed Himself as man in Christ, but when the full revelation of God comes out, He is three persons in one God.
Look at Genesis 18:1-21And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; 2And he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him: and when he saw them, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, (Genesis 18:1‑2), "And the Lord appeared unto him in the plains of Mamre: and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day; and he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him." What did he say? "My Lords"? No, "My Lord." There were three men. "If now I have found favor in Thy sight, pass not away, I pray Thee, from Thy servant: let a little water, I pray you, be fetched, and wash your feet, and rest yourselves under the tree: and I will fetch a morsel of bread, and comfort ye your hearts.... And Abraham hastened into the tent unto Sarah, and said, Make ready quickly three measures of fine meal.”
Here three measures of meal is used again. It is to be made into cakes to be set before these wondrous visitors. There is a good deal more to be set before them, but I mention this because the expression "three measures of meal" is used here. Now we think it was God appearing to Abraham in this way, in manhood, but it is three, and Abraham addresses them as though they were one.
It is all the more striking when we look at Genesis 19 and see the contrast. Lot is a picture of the worldly Christian. When He visited Sodom—when He visited Lot—it wasn't as three men, but as two angels. Lot sat, not in the door of his tent, but in the gate. "And Lot seeing them rose up to meet them... and he said, Behold now, my lords." Notice he addresses them in the plural. "Turn in, I pray you, into your servant's house, and tarry all night.”
Of all that feast there is not one single thing worth mentioning except that unleavened bread. Abra4, 'Feasts of the, Cord ham had three measures of meal made into cakes, a calf tender and good, and butter and milk, but poor Lot had a most elaborate spread. He was in the city where he could get whatever he wanted, but there is not a thing mentioned but the unleavened bread. And that he had to make-it wasn't ready. There was no tree there either. Of course, the tree makes us think of Peter's words, "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree." And it is under the tree that God and man meet, as it were.
In Leviticus 23:1111And he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted for you: on the morrow after the sabbath the priest shall wave it. (Leviticus 23:11), we know Christ as our Passover and the value of His death, and then in resurrection as the triumphant One. That line of things is so needful for the Christian, because so many seem to stop at the death of Christ, saying, "Yes, I know He died for my sins." But the wave sheaf is for us too-Christ in resurrection.
In Leviticus 23:1717Ye shall bring out of your habitations two wave loaves of two tenth deals: they shall be of fine flour; they shall be baken with leaven; they are the firstfruits unto the Lord. (Leviticus 23:17), notice the two wave loaves were to be baked with leaven. We need to go back a little. First the wave sheaf of the crop is waved before the Lord on the morrow after the Sabbath. We don't know how long it is after the whole crop is gathered in until some is turned into food. Verse 15 says, "Ye shall count unto you from the morrow after the Sabbath, from the day that ye brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven Sabbaths shall be complete.”
In James 1:1818Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures. (James 1:18) we read, "Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures." Christ is the firstfruits of them that slept. Now, we—a kind of firstfruits— are typified by these two loaves that are baked with leaven, because in us there is evil, and will be as long as we are here in the body. But there was no evil in Him. You will find with these two wave loaves there is a sin offering, which covers the evil, as it were, before God.
In verse 19 we get something that is not in the wave sheaf. "Then ye shall sacrifice one kid of the goats for a sin offering." When you come to the actual fulfillment of that, counting from the very day that Christ rose, the morrow after the Sabbath, seven weeks till the morrow after the seventh Sabbath, it brings you up to the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Christ. Look at Acts 2:11And when the day of Pentecost was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. (Acts 2:1):"And when the day of Pentecost was fully come."
The meaning of Pentecost is fifty days, and it is just this: Fifty days after Christ rose, the Holy Spirit came down into the world to take out two wave loaves for the Lord. Isn't that most wonderful? To the very day of the coming of the Holy Spirit, it was all foreshadowed 1500 years before.
During the forty days after He was risen from the dead, He told them to tarry in Jerusalem till they were endued with power from on high and not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise. It would be not many days hence. It would be ten days—not many though. That brings you right up to the fiftieth day, and on that day Acts 2 gives us an account of the Holy Spirit's descent. He forms the saints into one body, and afterward the Gentiles are brought in. I suppose it is the Jew and Gentile that are set forth in the two wave loaves.
Notice what we get in verse 22: "And when ye reap the harvest of your land, thou shalt not make clean riddance of the corners of thy field when thou reapest, neither shalt thou gather any gleaning of thy harvest." When the Lord comes to take us up, the corners will be left, because there will be a remnant that will be taken up too. Some are put to death in two different companies at least, and that will complete the gathering out of those that are left (Rev. 20:44And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that were beheaded for the witness of Jesus, and for the word of God, and which had not worshipped the beast, neither his image, neither had received his mark upon their foreheads, or in their hands; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4)).
What follows that is an entire change. You will notice we have the first month mentioned. There is not another month mentioned till we come to the seventh. What is between is the growing, harvest and reaping, and all connected with the heavenly people till they are completed and out of the scene.
Now on the first day of the seventh month there was to be a blowing of trumpets and that is typical of what will happen after the Lord has taken us up. There will be a blowing of trumpets that will gather Israel back to their land. After they are brought back, the next thing is that on the tenth day of the seventh month they are to have what is called the great Day of Atonement. They are to do no work, not merely no servile work, but no manner of work. It is a day of atonement and they are to afflict their souls. That will be the work of God's grace in the hearts of Israel, bringing them to see their wickedness in having put Christ to death. "And one shall say unto Him, What are these wounds in Thine hands? Then He shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of My friends." It is beautiful that in Zechariah we have the full accomplishment of that Day of Atonement.
On the fifteenth day of the seventh month is the feast of tabernacles. Their troubles all over, they are dwelling in tents commemorative of their troubles. Surely they are to rejoice before the Lord, and everything that has breath will praise God in that day. It is pictured in the Psalms too, as well as in the Prophets, because their dwelling in tents is typical of the millennium when all nations on the earth will come up to Jerusalem and keep the feast of tabernacles. It is also set forth in the prophecy of Zechariah. It reaches on from the very beginning through all the dealings of God with us until His rest is reached in the end—the Sabbath of eternity, and no work there—no manner of work.
It is plain from Scripture that when the Lord comes and takes up His people, for those who have heard the truth and not accepted it, there is no more hope. No question about that. It makes it so solemn for those who hear the truth now, because if they do not submit to it, it is because they received not the love of the truth that they might be saved. God shall send them strong delusion that they should believe a lie.
The door will be closed upon those who have had an opportunity, but multitudes of heathen will have the gospel of the kingdom preached to them, and on receiving it they will be blessed on earth—not for heaven—during the time of Christ's reign when there will be peace and prosperity. Satan will be bound and cast into the bottomless pit and earth shall keep her jubilee under the reign of Christ.