Leviticus 23--Holy Days (Holidays)

Leviticus 23
English Standard Version

Feasts of the Lord23 The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 2 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts.

The Sabbath
3 “Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places.

The Passover
4 “These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, the holy convocations, which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. 5 In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at twilight, is the Lord's Passover. 6 And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; for seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. 7 On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 8 But you shall present a food offering to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work.”

The Feast of Firstfruits
9 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 10 “Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, 11 and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, so that you may be accepted. On the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. 12 And on the day when you wave the sheaf, you shall offer a male lamb a year old without blemish as a burnt offering to the Lord. 13 And the grain offering with it shall be two tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, a food offering to the Lord with a pleasing aroma, and the drink offering with it shall be of wine, a fourth of a hin. 14 And you shall eat neither bread nor grain parched or fresh until this same day, until you have brought the offering of your God: it is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings.

The Feast of Weeks (Pentecost)
15 “You shall count seven full weeks from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering. 16 You shall count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath. Then you shall present a grain offering of new grain to the Lord. 17 You shall bring from your dwelling places two loaves of bread to be waved, made of two tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour, and they shall be baked with leaven, as firstfruits to the Lord. 18 And you shall present with the bread seven lambs a year old without blemish, and one bull from the herd and two rams. They shall be a burnt offering to the Lord, with their grain offering and their drink offerings, a food offering with a pleasing aroma to the Lord. 19 And you shall offer one male goat for a sin offering, and two male lambs a year old as a sacrifice of peace offerings. 20 And the priest shall wave them with the bread of the firstfruits as a wave offering before the Lord, with the two lambs. They shall be holy to the Lord for the priest. 21 And you shall make a proclamation on the same day. You shall hold a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. It is a statute forever in all your dwelling places throughout your generations.

22 “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.”

The Feast of Trumpets
23 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 24 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall observe a day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blast of trumpets, a holy convocation. 25 You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food offering to the Lord.”

The Day of Atonement
26 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 27 “Now on the tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. It shall be for you a time of holy convocation, and you shall afflict yourselves and present a food offering to the Lord. 28 And you shall not do any work on that very day, for it is a Day of Atonement, to make atonement for you before the Lord your God. 29 For whoever is not afflicted on that very day shall be cut off from his people. 30 And whoever does any work on that very day, that person I will destroy from among his people. 31 You shall not do any work. It is a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwelling places. 32 It shall be to you a Sabbath of solemn rest, and you shall afflict yourselves. On the ninth day of the month beginning at evening, from evening to evening shall you keep your Sabbath.”

The Feast of Booths
33 And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, 34 “Speak to the people of Israel, saying, On the fifteenth day of this seventh month and for seven days is the Feast of Booths to the Lord. 35 On the first day shall be a holy convocation; you shall not do any ordinary work. 36 For seven days you shall present food offerings to the Lord. On the eighth day you shall hold a holy convocation and present a food offering to the Lord. It is a solemn assembly; you shall not do any ordinary work.

37 “These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as times of holy convocation, for presenting to the Lord food offerings, burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, each on its proper day, 38 besides the Lord's Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your vow offerings and besides all your freewill offerings, which you give to the Lord.

39 “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month, when you have gathered in the produce of the land, you shall celebrate the feast of the Lord seven days. On the first day shall be a solemn rest, and on the eighth day shall be a solemn rest. 40 And you shall take on the first day the fruit of splendid trees, branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days. 41 You shall celebrate it as a feast to the Lord for seven days in the year. It is a statute forever throughout your generations; you shall celebrate it in the seventh month. 42 You shall dwell in booths for seven days. All native Israelites shall dwell in booths, 43 that your generations may know that I made the people of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

​44 Thus Moses declared to the people of Israel the appointed feasts of the Lord.

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Instead of just talking about these days a Sabbaths or Feasts or Festivals, I decided to stick with the theme of Leviticus for my title and call these "holy days" (which is what the idea of a Sabbath day is, though a Sabbath day is even more specific than that).  In fact, we get our modern word "holiday" from mashing together the words "holy "and "day" meaning that our holidays should be set apart for a special purpose and should be uncommon and not like any ordinary day.  While these days here are ordained by God for the Jewish people, Paul seems to tell the Christians in the book of Colossians that these are not the most important issues and should not be seen as something that "disqualifies" someone from being a Christian or their eternal inheritance that is secure in Christ as He is the fulfillment of all these Feasts and Festivals.  They all have different meaning for us as Christians now, and they still give us cause to remember and celebrate, though in a slightly different way now as we see how these days represent what God has done, what He is doing, and what He will continue to do.  While this may not be a "salvation issue," I still think these days are there for our benefit and to help mark us as the people of God.  How we choose to stop and reflect on who God is and what He has done is an important part of our testimony that puts our "talk" and our "walk" into harmony for those around us and is a reminder to us (we all need the reminders), a teaching opportunity for future generations and something that helps promote unity as we have these things in common with all believers.

We've already talked about many of these holy days as we studied the book of Exodus and I believe I went in depth for all of them.  All of these days mentioned here are what we could the "high holy days" or "holy holidays" as they are set apart from even the "ordinary" holy days.  These are not simply civil holidays like how we celebrate Independence Day on July 4th in the United States--that's an important day for us as citizens of the United States of America, but that's not something we have in common with all those who are citizens of our heavenly kingdom for which we are ambassadors.  It will be my goal in this blog not to tell you the history of each of these holidays or its meaning to the people at that time, because I think we've covered that well in Exodus and here and the passage is clear here in Leviticus, and we'll see the people observe (or fail to observe) these holidays in Numbers and God will talk about them again to the new generation before entering the promised land in the book of Deuteronomy.  We have had and will have plenty of opportunity to hear from God on why the people of that time and their children should remember these events, but we see later in the Old Testament that part of what lead to the degradation of society is that the people neither knew God nor knew of His works because they forgot to celebrate these holy days and failed to understand their meaning.  For instance, if the Feast of Thanksgiving in the United States just becomes a time for "food, family and football" as most Americans like to say, we have missed it completely as it is supposed to be a day of celebration of God's provision for bringing us through the year (as many died that first year as colonists), remembering the kindness of the Indians who shared their crops with our people so that they did not die, and a time for us offer our "firstfruits" of our harvest to God in a special way that gives thanks for all that we trust that He's going to provide and know that even when it's hard God will provide for all of our needs. However, we're not here to talk about US holidays today--I'm just using some of them to draw a comparison--especially since several of them have their roots in one or more of these holidays that we're going to study.  Today's blog will try to focus on the application of these holidays to the Church today and how these holidays were used as prophetic instruments to tell us something of the person and ministry of Christ.  I'm probably only going to dedicate a couple of sentences to each holy day here as there are many of them and because we've spent a lot of time on most of these previously.

The Sabbath
This celebration was to happen on a weekly basis and served the purpose of remembering God as Creator who made heaven and earth and all that is in them in six literal days of creation and then rested on the seventh day.  He made that day special and different by resting on that day and He called that day "holy" as a day of rest for man and a day to remember and honor Him.  The way in which the people gathered together and worshiped on that day and treated this day different from every other day in the week was one of the key ways that God chose to identify His people to the nations around them and remind His people of who they were.  The same can be said for us today as Christians as we gather weekly to remember God as not only the Creator of Genesis 1, but the one who makes us a "new creation" in 2 Corinthians 5:17, and the one who is creating a place for us in heaven and will make a New Heaven and New Earth for us that we see in Revelation 21 and 22--the ultimate fulfillment of our Sabbath rest as we see in Hebrews 3 and 4 as the author to the Hebrews tells these Christians that Jesus offers a "better rest" and a "better Sabbath" than Moses (the Law) did.

The rest of the days here have been well-explained in another blog post that I found.  I'll post a link here, but then will also copy/paste the post into this blog post for preservation in case that link over dies.  ​https://www.wycliffe.org/feast/7-feasts-that-point-to-christ.  Everything below the "separator" line here is copied from Wycliffe's blog and was authored by Jessie Blackman and Susha Roberts.

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​7 FEASTS THAT POINT TO CHRIST

Discover the clues that God left for Israel and for people today to find his son!

By Jessie Blackman and Susha Roberts

When I was a kid, the white-washed walls of a doctor’s waiting room pointed to only one thing: checking out the “Where’s Waldo?” book. Forget “Home and Garden” or “People” magazines — my eyes eagerly searched for the familiar time-waster of trying to find Waldo in the midst of the messy crowd.

Sorting through prophecies and symbolisms of the Old Testament can feel similar, like an intricate game of “Where’s Jesus?”

But the richness of God’s Word is that it often reveals a deeper truth if you know where to look.

Jesus often pointed to the “beginning” (Genesis), the Law of Moses (first five books) and the prophets (Jeremiah through Malachi) to reveal God’s plan for mankind and clues to recognize the Savior. For the Jews of his time, understanding the Old Testament was key to discovering that Jesus is their promised Messiah.

And if you have heard the Good News from the New Testament and received Jesus as your Savior, Old Testament prophecies and symbolism provide further proof and assurance that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God.

1. Passover — Leviticus 23:4-8This feast remembers the last plague in Egypt, when the angel of death “passed over” the children of Israel who applied the blood of the lamb to their doors. The Israelites took a bundle of hyssop and dipped it into the blood in the basin at the threshold. Going up, they put it up on the lintel, then touched the two sides of the frame (Exodus 12). Can you see the imagery? Bottom to top, side to side: the motion formed a cross.

When John the Baptist said, “Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, NLT), he understood the Old Testament reference. And in the New Testament we see that Jesus — born in a stable, visited by shepherds and led to the slaughter — is that lamb sent for us. His death allows the judgement we deserve to pass over us.

When we accept Christ, we accept the loving gift of a second chance — because of his death on the cross, we have a clean slate!

2. Unleavened Bread — Leviticus 23:6This seven-day feast begins on the day following the start of Passover. In the haste of the Israelites to leave Egypt, there was no time to add leaven (yeast) to their bread. During this time, remembering the hardships in Egypt and how God freed them from captivity, the Jews eat nothing leavened.

Leaven often represents sin and decay in the Bible. Once incorporated, yeast becomes an inseparable part of the bread; the same is true for sin’s effect on our lives. The Jews were constantly sacrificing unblemished animals to temporarily atone for sin. Only the Messiah, the perfect sinless sacrifice, could offer a permanent solution.

The unleavened bread represents Jesus’ sinless life; he is the only perfect sacrifice for our sins.
In John 6:35, Jesus boldly states that he is the bread of life. Not only does he remove our sins, he nourishes our souls!

3. First Fruits — Leviticus 23:10The Feast of First Fruits is one of three Jewish harvest feasts to thank and honor God for all he provided. Although they didn’t know it at the time, the children of Israel were celebrating what would become a very important day.

The priests sacrificed Passover lambs on the 14th day of the month of Nisan, and the first day of Passover was the 15th. The Feast of First Fruits was celebrated the third day, the 16th of Nisan. This “third day” celebration was the same day that Jesus resurrected from the dead. In 1 Corinthians 15:20 Paul refers to Jesus as the first fruits of the dead. He represents the first of the great harvest of souls — including you — that will resurrect to eternal life because of the new covenant in his blood (Luke 22:20).

4. Feast of Weeks or Pentecost — Leviticus 23:16This feast is the second of the three harvest feasts. It occurs exactly seven weeks after the Feast of First Fruits, so it’s also called Pentecost which means “50 days.” Traditionally, people were expected to bring the first harvest of grain to the Lord including two leavened loaves of bread.

God’s plan to save souls included more than the Jews. Through Jesus, this plan was revealed. In Matthew 9:37 Jesus tells his disciples that “the harvest is great, but the workers are few.” Then he put the plan into place: In Acts 1:4 he tells them to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit.

That arrival was the day the Church was born — Pentecost — and the harvest began with 3,000 souls. The message spread to both Jews and Gentiles (the two leavened loaves of bread), extending the harvest to us!
5. Feast of Trumpets — Leviticus 23:24In a beautiful declaration God commands his people to rest. During this time all regular work is prohibited, and men and women present a food offering to God.

In Leviticus 23:24 God commands his people to gather and to commemorate the decree with trumpet blasts.

On the same front, the sound of a trumpet is also associated with the rapture, or the time Jesus will return for his bride (1 Corinthians 15:52). Once he returns, there will be a wedding feast of celebration. Revelation 19:9 says, “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb” (NLT). He’s preparing us to celebrate!

6. Day of Atonement — Leviticus 16, 23:26-32To make “atonement” is to make restitution for wrongs committed. As a day of humility and repentance to God, it was a time for the Jews to get their hearts, consciences and lives right before him. The observance involved the sacrifice of animals as the High Priest entered the Holy of Holies. What the High Priest did there couldn’t offer more than an annual payment for their sins. However, hiding in plain sight was the promise of one who could atone for their sins permanently (Hebrews 9:12).

Where is Jesus in these sacrificed animals? The bull and one of the goats was an offering of thanks, but the “scapegoat” took on their sins (Leviticus 16:10). The scapegoat was to be burdened with all the sins of Israel and sent into the wilderness.

The Jewish leaders condemned Jesus, and he — burdened with the sins of all mankind — was led out of the city to be crucified: “He himself is the sacrifice that atones for our sins — and not only our sins but the sins of the world” (1 John 2:2, NLT).

The necessity of the Day of Atonement was rendered void by Jesus’ death on the cross — our debt has been paid!

7. Feast of Tabernacles or Booths — Leviticus 23:34Celebration always follows the Day of Atonement. The Feast of Tabernacles celebrates God’s provision and protection for the people of Israel during their 40 years wandering in the wilderness; for the seven days of the feast, people live in temporary structures like they did in the wilderness. The Lord himself was with the Israelites in the desert, in a tented temple called the tabernacle, so the feast also celebrates his presence as he tabernacles (dwells) with us.

Jesus is called Emmanuel, meaning “God is with us” (Matthew 1:23, NLT). He put on a temporary tabernacle — a human body — to dwell on this earth and offer himself as a sacrifice.

This feast also points to the promise that God will return and rally with his people — in the person of Jesus. And when he does, he has promised that there will be no more death and suffering, that he himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Revelation 21:4). His return is the final answer to the hope we’ve carried our entire lives. What a day that will be!
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Unlike searching for Waldo in a messy world, we can pray for God’s wisdom as we read his Word. Even with this small glimpse into these feasts, we see his intentional love for humanity has endured centuries, and he has left us clues that foreshadow the beauty that is to come. The Old Testament has many hidden truths that, in light of the New Testament, bring a richer understanding to your life in Jesus Christ.