2BC BIBLE STUDY NOTES

Wednesday in the Word

Second Baptist Church

May 15, 2019

Leviticus 23:23-44

1. Last week we studied the spring festivals that the Lord commanded. The Hebrew year began in what we now called April. The very first festival of the year and time of celebration was the Passover and the feast of unleavened bread. On the l4th day of the first month the Passover lamb was slain and the 15th day of the month the people ate unleavened bread for seven days. This was an eight-day celebration that went from Sabbath to Sabbath. The Passover lamb and the unleavened bread were all pictures of Christ. The next festival was the first-fruit offering. The day after that Sabbath, the people are to bring in a part of the grain harvest and Wave it before the lord and make a sacrifice of another lamb together with a grain offering and drink offering. This was a big celebration. This celebration is a picture of the resurrection. The Passover lamb is a picture of the death of Christ, but this is a picture of his resurrection and exaltation as Lord of Lords. The festival that comes after this is the feast of weeks. This festival is fifty days later and is the only sacrifice made with bread that has yeast in it. This festival is a picture of us being united with Christ and accepted before the Lord with our sins being taken away. Notice how the two loaves of leavened/yeast bread are held up with a slain lamb, a sin offering, and a fellowship offering. Today we will look at the festivals that came in the fall.

2. Verses 23-25. The fall festivals began in our October. All of these festivals were considered Sabbaths or days of no work. This was the seventh month of the Hebrew calendar coinciding with the fall harvest. Notice that the Lord has the festivals at the time of the spring harvest and the fall harvest. The harvest is a time of gathering what belongs to God. We can see that these festivals and harvest times are symbolic of God harvesting our souls through salvation. We are God’s harvest with Christ being the first fruit of the harvest. If the first harvest is a picture of Jesus’ first coming and our salvation on earth, then the latter harvest is a symbol of his second coming and our gathering at the last day into heaven. The Jews begin blowing ram’s horns (shofars) in their synagogues in the sixth month (Elul) and continue up to the Day of Atonement. The trumpets reminded the people that the Day of Atonement is approaching. It was a time to reflect on the year and the state of your character and your relationship to God. Then, on the first day of the seventh month (Rosh Hashanah), there is a special service that features an elaborate ceremony of trumpet blowing. The trumpets remind the Jews of at least eight things: To prepare for the coming Day of Atonement by examining the life you have lived this past year. To celebrate the creation with God as its King. This is because, according to Jewish tradition, creation began on the first day of the seventh month. To remember that the Lord descended upon Mount Sinai with the loud blast of a shofar (Exodus 19:16-19). To imagine the sound of the heavenly shepherd recalling those who have strayed from Israel’s fold. To rejoice in freedom from slavery. In the past, slaves were freed at the blast of a shofar. To rejoice in restoration. Property was returned at the blast of the shofar at the Jubilee Year (Leviticus 25:9).To remember Abraham’s obedience when he offered his son Isaac. When Abraham sacrificed Isaac, a ram was caught in the thicket by its horns. To look forward to the coming of Messiah’s kingdom, which the blast of the shofar will bring in.

   As the spring holy days spoke of the first coming of Messiah, so we can begin to see that the fall holidays speak of His return. This is seen by the consistent imagery of trumpets in the New Testament: (Matthew 24:31, l Corinthians 15:52, l Thessalonians 4:16, Revelation 8:6, Revelation 9:20, 21). Like the trumpets that announce the Lord as King over His creation, so trumpets announce the coming of Messiah as King. Like the trumpets that announce the Jubilee Year and freedom to slaves, so trumpets announce the translation of our corruptible flesh into incorruptible new bodies. As the trumpets sounded before the Day of Atonement call the Jews to repentance, so these trumpets call all of mankind to repent before the terrible Day of the Lord. The seven trumpets in Revelation, like the shofars that sound in the synagogues, are a call to the earth to repent. Consequently, we have the significance of Revelation 9:20, 21: The trumpets have sounded and the world has not repented. The Bowl Judgments, containing the Wrath of God, may now be poured on the earth. In short, the trumpets announce the coming of the King. As such, they call for the people of God to prepare their hearts for His coming. As Jesus has said, He wants to come and find us at our posts. For the lost, the trumpets call for repentance. Failing repentance, the trumpets announce the coming Judgment of God. Consequently, the next holy day will be, for each person, either a Day of Atonement or the Day of Judgment.

3. Verses 26-32. The Day of Atonement, or Yom Kippur, represents the day when the priest puts on special clothes and makes offerings to atone, or cleanse, the holy sanctuary, the temple, and the altar. He then makes atonement for the priests and the people. The day is solemn and serious. It is a day of complete rest and fasting with a goal of humbling the soul. As a holy day, it serves to remind us of the gravity and offense of sin. The eve of the Day of Atonement begins with the blast of a shofar. Afterwards, the shofars are silent until next year. Yom Kippur begins in the evening of the ninth day of the seventh month. The atonement of the people involved two goats. One goat was killed and the priest transferred the sins of the people onto the other goat called the scapegoat and then it was driven into the wilderness. The first goat paid the penalty of the people’s sin; the second took the sin away. The ancient Jews considered the two goats to be two halves of a single sacrifice. Therefore, they would select two goats that very closely resembled each other. The Day of Atonement is about the payment and removal of the sins of the nation for a year, but is also a picture of God totally removing sin from the world.

4. Verses 33-44. The Feast of Tabernacles, also known as the Feast of Booths and Sukkot, is the seventh and last feast that the Lord commanded Israel to observe and one of the three feasts that Jews were to observe each year by going to “appear before the Lord your God in the place which He shall choose” (Deuteronomy 16:16). The Feast of Tabernacles takes place on the l5th of the Hebrew month Tishri. This was the seventh month on the Hebrew calendar and usually occurs in late September to mid-October. The feast begins five days after the Day of Atonement and at the time the fall harvest had just been completed. Lasting eight days, The Feast of Tabernacles begins and ends with a special Sabbath day of rest. During the days of the feast all native Israelites were “to dwell in booths” to remind them that God delivered them out of the “land of Egypt” and to look forward to the coming Messiah, Jesus Christ, who would deliver His people from the bondage of sin. This feast, like all of the feasts of Israel, consistently reminded the Jews and should remind Christians as well that God has promised to deliver His people from the bondage of sin and deliver them from their enemies. Part of God’s deliverance for the Israelites was His provision and protection of them for the 40 years they wandered in the wilderness, cut off from the Promised Land. The same holds true for Christians today. God protects us and provides for us as we go through life in the wilderness of this world. While our hearts long for the Promised Land (heaven) and to be in the presence of God, He preserves us in this world as we await the world to come and the redemption that will come when Jesus Christ returns again to “tabernacle” or dwell among us in bodily form.

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