Leviticus 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 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 low 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 first-born.
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 even. 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; and they were to stay inside of 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 was death. The first-born of all in Egypt, from the king on the throne to the beggar on the dunghill, man and beast, the first-born 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 blood of Christ, judgment never can touch us.
This event took place in the land of Egypt, but 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." It is a very serious feast, this—a very solemn one. Where an account of it is given in Deuteronomy, there is not a word about rejoicing.
There are three principal feasts in Deuteronomy 16: the Passover, or unleavened bread, which is in connection with it; Pentecost, or Feast of Weeks; and 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. "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 a holy convocation: ye shall do no servile work therein."
Just notice what is said in Deuteronomy 16:1-9. Not one word of joy or rejoicing. And it is more to be marked because when you read the next verse, which takes up the Feast of Weeks, that is, Pentecost, you will find for instance in verse 11, "Thou shalt rejoice," etc. There is a beautiful principle furnished us with regard to the Feast of Weeks. Not only, "Thou shalt 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, all were to be brought in, servants and everybody, in this rejoicing.
Verse 13—"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 Passover brings before us the awful 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 consequences of Christ's death—His work—the giving of the Holy Ghost; that, of course, brings joy to the heart; and there is rejoicing in the Feast of Weeks. This 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 first fruits. 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, but 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, does it? Not even to the resurrection? Lev. 23:10—"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," etc. It could not be waved before the Lord any other day but the morrow after the sabbath. The priest takes it in his hand and passes it before the Lord as he says, "to be accepted for you." "And ye shall offer that day" certain offerings spoken of.
If we let the light of 1 Corinthians 15 shine back here, it just illuminates this whole statement. Verse 20—"But now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept." 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 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—and 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 Scripture cannot be broken; and here you find it actually carried out to the very letter. So we get Christ's death in the Passover. 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, each believer 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 first fruits.
Then it is the more to be noticed, because in the offerings that accompany this wave sheaf, you look in vain to find a sin offering. You can find a burnt offering, and you can find meat offering and drink offering, but no sin offering; for there was no sin in Him. He needed no sin offering, and that shows all the more strikingly how carefully the Spirit of God guards the truth of His holy Person. No sin offering is connected with this wave sheaf.
"And ye shall offer that day when ye wave the sheaf a 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 a 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."
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, particularly for the young, that we 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 1500 years. Moses did not understand it, and nobody could understand it until its accomplishment, and the light shines back and fills it with illumination. Then we see whose mind it was that dictated Leviticus, and whose mind it was that dictated Corinthians. That explains Leviticus, though written 1500 years earlier. It was one Mind running through the whole.