The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 3 – 20
You’ve seen in this series a great many things about the false religion. About their holidays and symbols, their pagan rituals and observances. But behind every myth is a kernel of truth; and behind every pagan counterfeit is a holy original.
After all, the point of a counterfeit is to conceal truth. That, by itself, proves there must be a TRUTH in there somewhere worth concealing! So the pagan churches and ancient Babylonian priests didn’t invent the idea of special holy days – abbreviated today as holidays. In fact, the Bible is full of them.
There are many large organizations, however deeply flawed, who teach some true things about the Bible today. There are churches that teach the law, there are churches that teach the truth about the trinity, there are churches that teach the Sabbath. But practically no one understands the truth about the holy days and observes them.
The Bible records holy days like the Passover (not Easter), unleavened bread (not Lent), Pentecost (not Mardi Gras), the feast of shouting (not Christmas), the day of atonement (not Halloween), the feasts of tabernacles and the last great day (not tent meetings or summer camp).
You’ve probably never even heard of these days, except when you stumbled across them in the Bible; and if you asked anyone about them, you were no doubt told they don’t matter to us today. That these were for the Jews, and not for Christians; for the Old Covenant, and certainly not for the New.
But if that’s true, why did Jesus promise His disciples that when He returned to set up His kingdom on Earth He would again keep the Passover with them? Luke 22:15-18. And why does God say that after His return, all the nations of Earth will be required to observe the Feast of Tabernacles? Zechariah 14:16.
Decades after the death of Christ, why does Paul – who knew, if anyone did, that these things were abolished – hasten to keep Pentecost at Jerusalem? Acts 20:16. Why does Paul command Gentile Corinthians to keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread? 1 Corinthians 5:7-8. Why was the New Testament church founded on the day of Pentecost, a holy day commanded to Israel over 1,500 years before? Acts 2:1.
These are questions no church can give a satisfactory answer to, because the only answer available is one they refuse to accept – that the New Testament church DID observe these days as God commanded, and that every true Christian since has done the same.
SHOULD WE KEEP GOD’S FEASTS TODAY?
The holy days are only spelled out in the OT, mostly in Leviticus 23. Go ahead and read it all, just so you are familiar with the topic – we’ll go through them one by one later. So does the fact that these are 2
only in the OT automatically mean we shouldn’t keep them today? Well, let me ask you a question; how many times should God have to tell you to do something?
Once God said to Adam, “Don’t eat of that fruit!”, did God have to come back every day and say it again? Could Adam have said to God, “But God! You didn’t tell me not to eat it TODAY!” – do you think that would have worked?
God commanded the observance of His holy days forever; how long is forever? See, if a person will only apply the most basic common sense to the Word of God, all the complications simply vanish! It’s EASY to understand, if you just believe it!
God doesn’t have to tell us to do something every day for it to be a command! A command of God given yesterday is as powerful as one given today, or one given 10,000 years ago! And until GOD repeals it, it STAYS a command! So when God commanded something in the Old Testament, IT STUCK.
And if God wanted a certain practice abolished, HE TOLD US! And told us clearly! How many verses make it clear that the sacrifices, circumcision, priesthood, and temple were moved by Christ, and therefore no longer should be practiced externally? Hundreds, right? Because God knew that would take a lot of proof!
And unless we are told God changed something, and told clearly, we should keep doing it. Remember, the New Testament does not spell out all Ten Commandments – they are all mentioned, but they are not laid out in order, nor is the full text of each ever quoted. But we know they are even more binding on us today than ever before!
And the New Testament doesn’t specifically command Sabbath observance – but it has been amply proven the Sabbath should be observed by these facts:
1. It was commanded forever.
2. It was never repealed.
3. The New Testament shows the early church observed it.
4. It will be observed in the future after Jesus’ return.
And all those same facts will prove the holy days as well. Remember, the New Testament church already HAD the Old Testament. It wasn’t necessary to spell out everything that was said, only to talk about the differences!
The Jews believe only the Old Testament, most of modern Christianity believes only the New – but to truly understand God you must have BOTH! The New Testament is about the differences between the new and old covenant, but it is NOT a complete recital of all the things necessary for salvation!
You’ve already seen many times that nothing was truly abolished by the NT except the curse of the law. So you should already be prepared for the idea that these ideas, while no doubt changed, are still relevant to us in some way today. Their significance moved from the external to the internal, but they are as binding as ever. 3
JEWISH FEASTS
Today’s Christians not only dismiss the feasts of God as “Jewish days”, but actively substitute pagan holidays from Babylon in their place! And yet there is not a single scripture abolishing the holy days. Though, as always, there are a few out-of-context arguments.
The most common of these is Colossians 2:16; you may remember this verse was also used to discredit the Sabbath, and the same answer holds true here: READ THE VERSE! It says plainly “let no man judge you… in respect of an holy day…”.
That doesn’t say, as people seem to think, “don’t keep the holy days”. It says when you DO keep the holy days don’t let people’s opinions trouble you! You shouldn’t fear their sneers, don’t worry about their opinions or their trite phrases like, “ewww, you just want to keep those JEWISH days”.
This verse tells you to do what God commanded and not to fear their reproaches (Isaiah 51:7)! Just as you do when they use the same tactics to discredit the Sabbath! Now read Leviticus 23:1-2. Whose feasts are these? Verse 2. Are they the Jew’s feasts? Are they man’s feasts? No!
God calls the Sabbath “My Sabbath”, and He calls the holy days, “My feasts”; nowhere outside of Protestant literature are they referred to as the “Jewish Sabbath”, or the “Jewish Feasts”! Men made up these phrases, as terms of derision, because they simply didn’t want to obey God!
And secondly, sneering “that’s Jewish” doesn’t prove anything. Read Romans 3:1-2 for what Paul himself said. The Jews were given these laws 3,500 years ago. Laws which Paul said initially gave them a huge advantage over the Gentiles specifically because they had these laws!
Unfortunately for them, their religion rejected Christ which prevents them from ever understanding the laws He gave them, or even keeping them correctly. So we are not trying to keep the Jewish feasts. The Jews do observe some of these days in a heavily corrupted, traditionalized form; but God specifically says these days are HIS days.
They don’t belong to any man, or any group of men, because God commanded these days, not the Jews. The fact that the Jews still keep them at all is to their credit, and a shame on Christians everywhere. Because as God’s feasts, they belong to all of His children.
SHADOWS OF THINGS TO COME
Others will object saying “But all the holy days were fulfilled in Christ”. This objection stems from the very next verse, in Colossians 2:17; but again, read the verse! Is that really what it says? Think about it!
This was written decades after the death of Christ; if the holy days were indeed fulfilled in Christ… then they were not, as Paul plainly said, shadows of things to come, but shadows of things that were already past when Paul wrote these words!
Yet decades after the death and resurrection of Christ this verse plainly says these days were STILL shadows of things YET TO COME! Still in his future, and STILL IN OURS! Shadows of things… now what does that mean exactly? 4
Look at your own shadow. It is merely an outline; a rough idea of what you look like. No one would recognize you from it; but if someone had, say, a picture of your arm, they could fit it into the proper place in your shadow’s framework.
Likewise, the holy days are SHADOWS of God’s plan. When understood they give us the OUTLINE of God’s plans – the OUTLINE of prophecy, within which we can hang all other prophecies! They are the line drawings within which we color the plan of God.
Read Hebrews 8:4-5. These priests and the things they do, the temple, the sacrifices, the holy days, these are all SHADOWS, portrayals of what things are like in Heaven or what they will be like in man’s future.
Now some of these shadows, like the sacrifices, have been fulfilled. Which is to say, their true purpose has been accomplished, and they have been moved inside of us where they always belonged. Others like circumcision or the physical priesthood have been replaced with something better, and the old has been abolished.
But others Paul plainly says are shadows of things to COME – things to come still yet in our future! So once again, the very scripture the world uses to disprove these days in fact helps to prove they MUST be kept, because they CAN’T have been fulfilled!
NOT FULFILLED IN CHRIST
The world wants to worship the idea of Jesus, without actually obeying Him or working towards His purpose for us (Luke 6:46). But the fact is, the world doesn’t revolve around Jesus; an awful lot of the Bible was not about Jesus at all, it was about our salvation.
Yes, He made that possible, but our salvation was the point. Remember, Jesus died so that man could be saved (John 3:17). Thus, He clearly felt that saving mankind was more important than He was! (Matthew 20:28). Did Jesus allow people to worship Him? Matthew 19:17. Why not? John 8:28, John 14:10.
What did Jesus want to accomplish? John 11:40-42. He wanted to show them the Truth, the Father’s words; but the world’s religions, predictably, do the opposite; they see Jesus in every temple, every snuffer, every holy day, every sacrifice.
If you google, say, the meaning of one of the holy days or the meaning of the veil in the temple, you’ll see, predictably, a lengthy monologue on how everything is about Jesus. But that’s just not true. Because we are told, quite clearly, that several holy days are NOT about Christ! For example, why should we keep the Feast of Tabernacles? Leviticus 23:42-43.
It is to remind us Israel dwelt as slaves in Egypt (and for us, it’s a reminder that we came out of spiritual Egypt, where we were spiritual slaves). Does that say, “Tabernacles is about Christ”? So how could this have been fulfilled in Christ, when it was never about Him?
Furthermore, the Feast of Shouting (probably mistranslated as “feast of trumpets” in your Bible – we’ll get into that more later) is specifically called a MEMORIAL of shouting (mistranslated “blowing of trumpets” (Leviticus 23:24). Now remember, this was said roughly 1,500 years BC. 5
Remember, a memorial is to remind us of a PAST event! A memorial of something that had already happened when Moses wrote these words. So… how can that be fulfilled in Christ when it was already a memorial, already about the past, 1,500 years BEFORE Jesus became a man??
Think about it! We keep memorials to constantly remind us every year of events that ALREADY HAPPENED! Will the fourth of July ever be fulfilled? Of course not. It might by abolished, or cancelled, but it can’t be fulfilled because it is impossible to fulfill a memorial! Because it points BACK, not FORWARD!
“WHEN THE SACRIFICES WERE DONE AWAY, SO WERE THE HOLY DAYS”
No scripture supports this idea, but Adventists in particular use this reasoning: “Sacrifices were done on those days, so when the sacrifices were abolished, the days were too”. They keep the Sabbath, but refuse to keep the holy days because of this argument.
But ironically, sacrifices were done on the Sabbath every week (Numbers 28:9-10). So by that logic, the Sabbath was done away too – and yet we have abundantly proved that it was not done away, nor will it ever be done away.
It seems rather obvious that you can take away certain elements of observance of a day, without stopping the observance of the day altogether. Many American towns and some states ban fireworks on the fourth of July. Does that mean the day itself is abolished? Do Americans no longer gather for cookouts, ball games, and parties? Was the Declaration of Independence no longer signed on that day in 1776? How absurd.
The change of one element of observance, however fundamental, does not mean the day itself no longer exists. Nor can any change made later affect the events that already happened which are memorialized in the day.
Any argument that abolishes the Sabbath also abolishes the holy days; if one falls, both fall; and if one stands, both stand. Because the Bible calls these days SABBATHS! (Leviticus 23:24, 32, 39, etc.). So you can’t keep the weekly Sabbath, but claim the seven “sabbath” holy days throughout the year were abolished. Nor, for that matter, the seven-yearly Sabbaths (Leviticus 25:1-8).
Just the fact that the Sabbath, or a holy day, or a law about donkeys and oxen plowing together, was a part of the Mosaic law doesn’t mean it was abolished with Moses. Because as you learned in the first series, nothing was abolished with Moses except the curse of the law; everything else just moved.
That’s why NT Gentile Christians continued to observe the holy days long after the death of Christ – and in fact, true Christians observe them to this very day. And what’s more, they will be observed by true Christians for eternity to come.
DAYS,MONTHS,TIMES,AND YEARS
One verse that will certainly come up as an objection in the mind of any educated Christian is Galatians 4:9-10. Now at first that looks like Paul is condemning observance of the Sabbath and holy days. But is he? Read it carefully. Does it mention either one? It mentions “days, and months, and times, and years”. 6
Which days? Which months? Which “times” are Paul condemning as “weak and beggarly elements”? The Sabbath? The Feast of Tabernacles? Christmas? The birthday of Julius Caesar? It doesn’t say, which makes your guess as good as mine!
But does it seem probable that Paul condemns the holy days as “weak and beggarly”, when they were part of the “holy, just, and good” law which Paul loved? (Romans 7:12, 22). So what did Paul really mean? I never get tired of saying it: read the context!
Back up and read the passage straight through from Galatians 4:8-12. JUST before speaking of these “days” and “times”, Paul spoke of what they did when they didn’t know God! In the time when they did service to “them which… ARE NOT GODS”! These people, then, were not Jews!
The context is not GOD’S days, times, years, but PAGAN days, times, and years! Then in verse 12 Paul concludes by begging them to “be as I am”; and we know for a fact that Paul observed the holy days! In fact, most of what we know about Christians keeping them in the NT, we learn from his writings!
So what does this passage really mean? Look at verse 10 again. Now does God command observance of “times”? Leviticus 19:26. Do worshipers of God observe “times”? Deuteronomy 18:10. Does it provoke God to anger when people observe times? 2 Kings 21:6. So who observes times? Deuteronomy 18:14.
Get that! It is the PAGAN NATIONS that observed “times”! Not the Jews, nor Old Testament Israelites, but PAGANS! These were observances the Galatians had picked up from PAGANS when they “knew not God”, and worshiped deities that “were not gods”!
“I ESTEEM EVERY DAY ALIKE!”
A related verse used to discredit the holy days and the Sabbath is Romans 14:5-6. Yet ironically, the Sabbath and holy days are not mentioned anywhere in the context. The problem Paul was addressing was the same as in Galatians 4, that like Catholicism today, Rome had nearly every day of the year dedicated to some god – the Catholics call them saints, but it’s the same thing.
Some of these days were accompanied by special rituals, similar to eating turkey on Thanksgiving or lamb on Easter; other days were considered bad luck days like Friday the 13th is today; on still others you didn’t eat meat, similar to Lent, and so on. The days and months were all named after the gods, just as they are in our calendar today.
And each god was believed to rule over the activities of their own day and cause good or bad luck for certain types of activities, depending on the particular powers of that god. It was rather like a horoscope is today (and is the ancestor of it). Similar superstitions existed for each year as well.
And new Christians, though technically not pagans anymore, were bringing their old way of life into the church and superstitiously observing these “days, months, times, and years” just as they had “in times past”, when they “did service to those who were not gods”. Paul vehemently condemned this practice. Just as God had done in the Old Testament in Hosea 2:13.
The RSV translates it, “And I will punish her for the feast days of the Baals [false gods] when she burned incense to them and decked herself with her ring and jewelry, and went after her lovers, and forgot me, says the LORD.” 7
The world today still observes many of these “feast days of the Baals”, only they have now given these pagan days Christian names such as Christmas, New Year’s, Easter, Valentine’s day, St. Patrick’s day, May Day, Halloween, and so on.
Recent lessons have shown you about a few of those days, and even casual research can show you the true origin of the others. The time is coming when anyone God finds keeping those “feast days of the Baals” will be punished… and those who aren’t keeping the feast days of the Lord will be forced to start (Zechariah 14:16-19).
“I’M NOT AN ISRAELITE”
Some people use this reasoning, saying “I’m not an Israelite, so I don’t have to keep those days”. That when God commanded the holy days, it only applied to the Israelites/Jews; Leviticus 23:42 is one of many examples.
Well, neither were the Egyptians, in Zechariah 14; neither were “all nations” in Isaiah 66:19-23; neither were the “sons of the stranger” in Isaiah 56:6-8. Yet all of these nations will be keeping the holy days after Jesus’ return… so how can they POSSIBLY apply just to the Jews today?
Second, how do you know, for certain, that you’re not an Israelite? You barely know your grandparents! You could easily be an Israelite and not know it. After the northern ten tribes of Israel were taken captive by Assyria, they disappeared from the view of most historians.
The Jews returned to their homeland from Babylon, and history has kept track of many of them since, but they were only ONE out of THIRTEEN tribes (Joseph’s tribe counted twice, as Manasseh and Ephraim) (Genesis 48:5, Joshua 14:4).
A (distantly) future lesson will show you exactly where these “lost” tribes went, and who they are today, but you just might be one of them. But that’s still just in the external, Israel-by-blood sense. Far more relevant is that by believing the gospel, you have ALREADY become a spiritual Israelite, whether you were born one or not!
And if you follow God you will be adopted into the family of Israel, and you will inherit its blessings as well as its responsibilities; among which is tithing (Genesis 28:22) and the observance of ALL the Sabbaths of the Lord! Pointedly including these holy days.
So, even if that argument were true – which it isn’t, since Christian Gentiles both have kept, and will keep these days – it doesn’t matter, because you ARE an Israelite if you believe the true gospel! And ALL FLESH will worship God on these days, Gentile or Israelite…
And those who don’t, God will “plead with” (Isaiah 66:16). So the only question is… will you do it the easy way, or the hard way?
WHAT ARE GOD’S HOLY DAYS?
God’s calendar is quite different from ours. The new day doesn’t begin at midnight, but at sunset (Genesis 1, Leviticus 23:32). And the new year doesn’t begin in winter, but in spring.
We have a strictly solar calendar; when the sun is in the same place, relative to Earth, we call that a new year. This takes about 365.25 days (give or take). The advantage of this is that it keeps the seasons in 8
their place, so that on a given year, you know about how warm to expect July 3 to be, and what date you should expect to see a frost or plant your crops.
But there are many other types of calendars, some which focus more on the moon instead. With a lunar calendar, each year is composed of twelve months, twelve cycles of the moon. This works out to being about 355 days (give or take), because a month is actually 29.5 days (give or take).
The advantages of this is that the cycles are very easy to keep track of, and the cycles come in smaller chunks. But the major disadvantage is that since the solar year is longer than the lunar 12-month year, the year pregresses by about 10 days each year.
In other words, every lunar year, a given date arrives ten days earlier, relative to the solar year. Which means that after about ten years, you’re having snowfall in August. The Islamic calendar is figured this way, and their holy days drift through the seasons over the years.
So while this keeps track of cycles as well as anything does, it’s not particularly useful for knowing the true “date”, when to harvest, when to plant, and so on. The Roman calendar, a version of which we use today, tried to solve this by being a solar calendar with vestigial months.
That’s why today we have the idea of “months” (related to the word “moon”), but they bear no relationship to the phases of the moon anymore. God’s calendar combined the two, by providing a solar anchor to a lunar cycle.
Which is to say, the new year always starts in the springtime, at the same general time of year, but not on a specific solar date. The Hebrew new year begins on the new moon nearest the solar equinox in the spring. Thus, the significance of the lunar calendar is maintained; but the accuracy of the solar calendar is also maintained.
Dates don’t drift through the seasons, but neither do they fall precisely on a given solar day. This also means that every so often (7 years out of every 19) there is a thirteenth month, to make up the extra days and bring the lunar year back into alignment.
And every 19 years, the sun, earth, and moon come into pretty good alignment, forming a “19 year time cycle”. This is because 19 solar years is 6,939.602 days, and 235 months is 6939.688 days. It’s not quite perfect, because no calendar is; that’s why even we have leap years.
Interestingly, the Hebrew calendar has 7 years with 13 months, and 12 years with 12 months. This is not an accident; the use of God’s two favorite numbers, 7 and 12, never is. But it will be a long time before I can fully explain why. Just remember, it matters.
Suffice it to say, God’s calendar balances the best parts of a solar calendar (its regularity) with the best parts of the lunar year (its ease of tracking for a low-tech world). So God’s “first month” generally starts sometime in March, rarely in early April; and the “seventh month” begins sometime in September, rarely in early October.
Exactly when that happens, and what days the holy days themselves are in the modern calendar, is a large and complicated and divisive subject, and something you shouldn’t worry about for now. For the next few lessons, all that really matters is the relative positions of the days. 9
THEFEASTS OF GOD
To start, we’ll just go through a simple list of what the days are, and the broadest possible understanding of what they’re about. We’ll go into more depth in the next couple of lessons, and then give you time to digest this understanding before, much later, we plumb the real depths of symbolism and meaning contained in these days.
It will help you understand and remember these days if you download and print a 30-day calendar from your supplementary material and mark out what happens on each of these days. It’s also the test for this lesson.
Writing down the festivals from the first month on the blank calendar in the top half of each day’s square, and write the festivals from the seventh month on the bottom half of each day’s square on the same calendar. You might be surprised at what you discover!
Remember: the first month is not April or any modern month; it typically overlaps with part of it, but these are not modern dates, but dates in the Hebrew calendar. To know when these days fall today you have to “translate” these dates into the modern calendar, and it’s different every year.
Each year, God’s calendar begins with the first day of the first month (Exodus 12:2). Write that on your calendar on the first day, a Sunday, to start. Then, read Leviticus 23:1-2. Notice what these days are; “holy meetings”, or “convocations”, or “gatherings” (depending on your translation).
These days, which we’ll call holy days to distinguish them from the world’s holidays, are times when God’s people gather together and learn more about Him and His plan. And to help us understand that plan, God commands certain rituals that are to be done on some of the days.
Some of those rituals, like the sacrifices and all things connected with the literal temple, are clearly abolished by the New Testament (or rather, moved internally, made to apply spiritually). Others the Bible does not say are done away, and so they are not done away.
Remember, if God wants to change something He wrote, He wrote something else to tell us what to change and how; if He didn’t tell us to change it, He didn’t want us to change it!
In Leviticus 23:1-3, God begins with the weekly Sabbath; enough has been said about that for now. Then in verse 4, He launches into a list of the “feasts of the Lord”. Which are related to, yet distinct from, the weekly Sabbath. These days are derived from the fourth commandment; which is why the Sabbath is mentioned first.
SPRING FEASTS
In Leviticus 23:5, God first speaks of Passover, the 14th day of the first month. Four days before this on the 10th day, the lamb had to be set apart from the flock and prepared for the sacrifice (Exodus 12:3-6). Though not a holy day, it’s a part of the observance of this day and deserves to be written on your chart.
The next day, the 15th, (verse 7) God says is a “holy convocation” – that is, a time to meet together with people who believe like you do – on which no work is to be done. God didn’t say this about the 14th day, which was still a day of work. But the 15th was a Sabbath, a day to rest from your labors, just as you do on the weekly Sabbath. 10
Also beginning the 15th day, God commands that you must eat unleavened bread for seven days (verse 6) – bread baked without yeast, baking soda, or baking powder. The Bible calls these “the Days of Unleavened Bread” or the “Feast of Unleavened Bread”, for obvious reasons, and the holy day on the 15th is thus called the first day of unleavened bread, and should be written on your chart.
On the seventh day of this feast (the 21st day of the month) there is another Sabbath – a day to do no physical work (verse 8). The days in between are not Sabbaths, and work may be done, but they are still part of the holy days, so each should be written on your chart as “2nd day of unleavened bread”, etc.
Now the offering mentioned in that verse is not done today, because that was part of the sacrifices and was moved, and replaced. But the holy day itself wasn’t done away, as you will later see Paul keeping it with Gentiles.
Verses 9-15 speak of the Wavesheaf Day, a day that has great symbolic importance and fell on the day after the weekly Sabbath during the Days of Unleavened Bread. It was always on a Sunday, and depending on when the weekly Sabbath fell that year, could be any of the days of unleavened bread except the first day; or it could fall the day after the feast.
The Wavesheaf Day has no command for a gathering together, resting, or worshiping, and so we don’t. It only has instructions on sacrifices and offerings, which again, we don’t do today. But we do use this day to figure out when the next holy day will be (verses 15-16).
We count from that Wavesheaf Day seven weeks; and after seven weeks (which is 49 days), the 50th day is a holy day. Because the first day of the count is a Sunday, and it takes place fifty days later, it always falls on a Sunday, sometime in late May or early June (obviously, you’ll have no room for this on your chart).
On this day, no work is to be done and there is to be a holy meeting (verse 21). And notice how long this day is to be observed (same verse)! These things were not meant to be done only for 1,500 years, but, in at least some sense, to be done forever!
Because this feast day comes after seven weeks of counting, it is called “the Feast of Weeks” in the Old Testament, and because it happens on the fiftieth day, it is called “Pentecost” (Greek for “count fifty”) in the New. Both are the same day, though.
FALL FEASTS
The next feast days aren’t until in the seventh month. Start reading in verses 23-25. This day is again a rest day, and again mentions physical offerings we no longer do. It should be noted that while most modern Bible versions call this day “a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets”, the original Hebrew doesn’t say that at all. That’s why, in most Bibles, the words “of trumpets” is in italics; to signal that the translators thought this word should be there, but that it wasn’t found in the original language.
The Young’s Literal Translation (YLT) makes it a point to translate the Bible literally and accurately – sometimes making it hard to read, but it helps to weed out bad translations. Here it translates this verse “a Sabbath, a memorial of shouting, a holy convocation”; notice the word “trumpets” is not found there, or in any other verse about this holy day.
So Moses didn’t record God saying, “This is the Feast of Trumpets”. Moses recorded God calling this day “a memorial of shouting”. Calling it “the feast of shouting” wouldn’t be a bad stretch, but calling 11
it “a Feast of Trumpets” (as those few who know of the holy days do) is simply un-Biblical, based on the traditions of men (Mark 7:8-9).
In verses 27-32 we are told about the Day of Atonement. This is a day to do no work, and “keep a Sabbath” (some Bibles say “celebrate a Sabbath”, which is a poor translation, as this is not a day for celebration), and to “afflict your souls”, or as other translations have it “humble your souls”. But what does that mean?
This phrase is not used for any other holy day, only the Day of Atonement. The other holy days are all called “Feasts”. Only on this day must we “afflict our souls”. What does that mean? Must we guess what God meant for us to do?
Must we ask the traditions of men what it means, how we should observe this day? Never! No, we simply read the other places where the Bible uses that phrase and see what it means to God to “afflict your soul”.
How did David humble his soul? Psalms 35:13, Psalms 69:10. How did Israel afflict their soul? Isaiah 58:3. How did Ezra’s people afflict themselves? Ezra 8:21. So this Day of Atonement was a day of fasting. How does God define fasting? Esther 4:16, Daniel 10:2-3.
Fasting symbolizes a deep remorse. If you think about it, if you’ve ever lost a loved one, you usually lose your appetite. People in mourning don’t care about food, their loss is so great. Similarly, something terrible happened on this day, and we remember it year by year by eating and drinking nothing – nothing at all – from sundown on the ninth day of the month until sundown on the tenth day of the month.
The fifteenth day of the seventh month (Leviticus 23:34) begins the Feast of Tabernacles, which lasts for seven days. “Tabernacles” means “temporary dwellings”, so in our modern language it would be called “the Feast of Tents”.
The first day of this feast is another holy day of rest and gathering together (verse 35) but the seventh day is not. And note carefully this is a seven-day feast, and on the eighth day is a wholly separate feast day that IS holy (verse 36).
God concludes and says these are the feasts – implying these are ALL the feasts – of God that we are commanded to keep, and they are to be kept in addition to the Sabbath day (verses 37-38). Then in verses 39-43, He digresses to explain how the Feast of Tabernacles is to be kept and why.
Note the command is for them to “dwell in booths”, meaning temporary dwellings, and God then goes on to tell them how to make tents. It is not necessary to specifically make tents in that fashion today, as the key command is that we must “dwell in tents”, or at the very least, temporary dwellings.
WHAT ABOUT NEW MOONS?
New moons are mentioned periodically throughout the Bible. But they are not mentioned in Leviticus 23, where it says “these are the feasts of the Lord” and pointedly excludes them. The conclusion then must be that they are NOT part of these feasts.
They are always mentioned separately from God’s Feasts and Sabbaths (1 Chronicles 23:31, 2 Chronicles 2:4, and several others), and separately from the holy days (Colossians 2:16), which again implies they are completely separate. 12
Psalms 81:3 speaks of a new moon on a “solemn feast day”. The only feast day that falls on a new moon is the Feast of Shouting on the first day of the seventh month, so this can only be speaking of that particular new moon, not every new moon of the year.
The new moons were a part of Israel’s calendar routine, and knowing when they occurred was necessary in order to establish and count the holy days. Over time these apparently were used as excuses to party by Israel’s kings (1 Samuel 20:24).
By the time of Isaiah their method of observing these days was repugnant to God (Isaiah 1:13-14) – surely because they were simply making something up to do on those days. But if it wasn’t important enough to God to tell me HOW to keep something, then it isn’t important enough to me to keep it.
We could make something up, as others have in modern times. We could have a Bible study, treat it as a Sabbath or as a three day feast, or we could howl at the moon… any one of these is as commanded as the others. Which does God want?
Deuteronomy 12:32 What thing soever I command you, observe to do it: thou shalt not add thereto, nor diminish from it.
Man-made rituals cannot lead you to God, no matter how good the intentions. If God wanted you to do something when you worshiped Him, or wanted worshiped in a certain way, He told you what to do. If He didn’t tell you to do it, He didn’t want you to do it.
And that is why we don’t keep new moons today. Because God never told us how to keep them, nor specifically commanded us to keep them. Man is specifically forbidden to make up things to help them worship God, with very good reason (Exodus 20:25; see also Mark 7:7-13, Revelation 22:18, etc.).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The best summary of this lesson is the examples of the apostles. Yes, it’s clear the OT commanded these days, but are they for Christians? Are they for US? Let’s let the NC Christians answer that for us and sum up all these days.
Every Christian knows it was on the Day of Pentecost when the holy spirit was given (Acts 2:1-4). But no one seems to stop to wonder WHY the New Testament church, fifty days after Christ was resurrected, almost two months after He had first ascended to heaven, was keeping a so-called “Jewish” holy day!
Christ’s death had made all the changes in the law that were ever going to be made. If His blood blotted things out, then those things were already blotted and gone. And yet God chose to START His new church ON one of these musty old holy days. Why? Was God Himself observing Pentecost?
This is an example that cannot be overly stressed. At its very inception, the church Christ built was keeping Pentecost! It was keeping one of those holy days, which strongly implies it was keeping ALL of them.
Did it perhaps change later? Did Paul teach Pentecost had been abolished in Christ? 1 Corinthians 16:8. Did Paul in fact hurry to make it to Jerusalem to keep Pentecost? Acts 20:16. Remember what you learned about the Sabbath; there is no New Testament command, “thou shalt keep the Sabbath day”. 13
But then, there is also no New Testament command, “the Sabbath day hath been abolished”. God commanded the Sabbath in the Old Testament, and He commanded it to be kept FOREVER. How often does God need to say something before you are obligated to do it?
Does He need to say it once? Twice? At the beginning of every book of the Bible? Need He put it on every page, to remind you that no, He still hasn’t changed His mind? Hebrews 13:8, Malachi 3:6. Of course not. If God says keep the Sabbath, we keep it until God tells us not to keep it anymore – not until a group of men who call themselves a church decide to move the Sabbath to Sunday!
This proof alone should be enough for any sincere Christian. But in addition, we find the New Testament church kept the Sabbath. Jesus kept it. Paul kept it. Paul taught Gentiles to keep it. And nowhere in the New Testament was it abolished. And the same is true of Pentecost.
God commanded it to be kept forever. God never abolished it. The New Testament church was founded on the day of Pentecost, Paul kept it, and no one ever said it was abolished. Hence, it is still binding on us today.
Of course, there are not nearly so many examples of Pentecost being observed as the Sabbath… because the Sabbath happens 52 times a year and Pentecost happens only once! But every example we do have is in favor of it.
Of course, the exact manner of observing these days has changed since the original command was given, because the temple has been destroyed, and the need for physical sacrifices was abolished by Christ’s own sacrifice. But it was a change not an abolishment!
All of the physical sacrifices were given as a type, a “shadow,” of the then future sacrifice of Christ and so were fulfilled by that sacrifice; but the day itself is still holy, and should still be observed year by year, just as the original Christians did.
Why? Because the giving of the holy spirit to the church on Pentecost was only a portion of the full meaning of this day! There is MORE to come, an even GREATER fulfillment for it and the other days yet in our future!
And the first Christians kept other holy days too; Passover immediately precedes the Days of Unleavened Bread, and because of that, it became customary to speak of the two as one feast; either all eight days were called “the Days of Unleavened Bread” or all eight days were called the “Feast of the Passover”.
These days were actually quite distinct in observance and meaning, as Leviticus 23 and other scriptures make clear. Nevertheless, they were often casually lumped together in conversation just as the world today says “the Christmas holidays”, which includes over a week from before Christmas until after New Year’s.
Even though New Year’s is a distinct holiday on its own, it’s usually lumped in with Christmas. This is just how people are, we’re lazy, particularly in our speech. So because of this, you’ll often find them spoken of in the same breath, or silently lumped together.
For example Jesus’ parents kept them every year (Luke 2:41-43). Notice they “fulfilled the DAYS of Passover”, proving they kept not only the Passover but also the DAYS that followed it – the Days of Unleavened Bread. 14
Luke, the author of the book of Acts, was aware of the Days of Unleavened Bread because he used them as a time reference in Acts 12:3. It seems Paul kept the Days of Unleavened Bread at Troas in Acts 20:5-6. At the very least, Paul was aware of it and said nothing against it. But later he specifically commanded the Gentile church at Corinth to keep the Days of Unleavened Bread: 1 Corinthians 5:7-8.
Note his phrasing: “let us keep the Feast”. Not “let the Jews keep the Feast”, but “let US”, speaking to Gentile Christians, “keep the Feast”! And they were told to keep it with unleavened bread, just as God commanded.
Now read Exodus 12:15, and compare it to what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 5:7, commanding them to “purge out the old leaven”, just as ancient Israel did. Paul then goes on to show that these concepts, while literally commanded, have a spiritual meaning as well.
In fact, it is by obeying the physical commands – whether we understand why or not – that we can in time, understand the spiritual application. All of these holy days are richer with meaning than you can possibly imagine. Once you begin keeping them, you’ll start to understand what that meaning is.
Most other holy days also make an appearance in the New Testament, always mentioned in passing because again, these commands didn’t need repeating on every page of the Bible. They had the Old Testament, God had commanded them to listen to it (2 Timothy 3:15-16), and that was enough.
Jesus kept the Feast of Tabernacles in John 7; the chapter covers the time from just before the Feast until the eighth day, the separate Feast called here “the Last Day, that Great Day”, which for simplicity’s sake we call simply “the Last Great Day”. There are references to the Feast scattered throughout the chapter (John 7:2, 8-11, 14).
Note that even though it is here called “the Jews’ feast”, that God had already staked His claim on the Feast calling it HIS Feast in Leviticus 23:2. The Jews no doubt considered it theirs, but God had the prior claim. What God claims as His cannot be taken away or given to someone else just because a man or group of men says, “This is MY feast!” – when God had already said it was His.
That same year on the Last Great Day, Jesus stood up and gave a special announcement (John 7:37-39), which if you study it will reveal a great deal about what that day represents. Atonement also makes an appearance, called simply “the fast”, in Acts 27:9.
We can be certain which day of fasting this was, because it was said in context of worsening weather, something that always happened in the Mediterranean around the fall equinox (October 21). Atonement generally falls in early October or late September, so “after the fast” the weather always got bad in the Mediterranean. So Paul can only be referring to the Day of Atonement.
The Feast of Shouting is the only one that makes no appearance in the New Testament (at least, not that I can find), but at the risk of repeating myself, it didn’t have to appear in the New Testament for us to observe it.
All these other days appeared, and every single time it was in a positive “let’s keep the Feast!” attitude, and not in a “those musty old days were abolished!” attitude. And since no other day in Leviticus 23 was abolished, it would be foolish to assume this one was.
Because on these days ALL FLESH will worship God. How can that not include His children, today… the rulers and teachers of that world?