Jewish Feasts - Initial Post

Good afternoon!!

As some of you know, I normally send out a daily email during Holy Week detailing out what all transpired with Jesus and other people each day.  This year I am going to focus on something different.  This year I want to focus on the seven major Jewish Feasts. We will start tomorrow, and this will be a year long email chain.  There are other Jewish celebrations, and we will cover some of them as we go along, but my focus will be on the main seven mentioned in Leviticus 23.  Since we are going through some major prophetic studies this year, I thought that a study of these feasts would be appropriate.

 

Please note, there is no way for me to cover every aspect of these feasts.  I will cover the main things I believe the Lord wants me to share this go around.  

 

My plan is to cover them around the time the Jewish nation celebrates them.  These feasts include Passover (Pesach), Unleavened Bread (Hag HaMatzot), First Fruits (Reishit), Weeks (Shavuot), Trumpets (Rosh HaShanah), Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur), and Booths/Tabernacles (Sukkot).

 

·      Spring Feasts – Passover, Unleavened Bread, First Fruits, Weeks

·      Fall Feasts – Trumpets, Atonement, Tabernacles

 

I first want to start off by looking into the word “feast”.  Yep, here comes the Hebrew translation.  The Hebrew word for feast is moed, pronounced mo-ade’.  The meaning is appointed place, appointed time, meeting, and sacred season.

 

Do you happen to know when the first time this word, moed, was used in the Bible?  Hint, it wasn’t Leviticus 23.  It was actually in Genesis 1:14, when God created the fourth day.  

 

“God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them be signs to indicate seasons [Hebrew: moed] and days and years,..”

 

When I look at this word in the context of Genesis, it gives me a different view of what feasts are.  If you are like me, when you hear the word feast, all of a sudden a table full of food appears in my head (turkey, ham, potatoes, gravy, bread, pie,….).  But in light of Genesis 1, there was no food present at that time, so feasts, aka moed, wasn’t associated with food at all.  Instead, it is an appointed time, an appointed place, an appointed meeting set by God Himself for His people to come and meet with Him in a special way.  His creation is designed for us to meet with Him, to have a feast with Him.  So all the Jewish feasts mentioned above, first and foremost are a time set aside by God, for His to people to come and meet with Him.  Keep that in mind as we go through them.  

I can't help but picture the conversation between God and Moses.  

God - Moses, can you please open up your calendar, I mean My calendar.
Moses - OK Lord, I have your calendar open
God - Please write in a special meeting with me on these specifics days I am about to give you. <God gives Moses the dates of the seven feasts>
Moses - Ok, I have written them all down
God - Now, please put an annual repeat on them until I tell you otherwise
Moses - Wow, OK. Done
God - Now share my calendar with all my people.  I have given this to you with enough lead time that there is no excuse for missing them.  I expect you to show up each and every year.  I will be there waiting.
Moses - Yes Lord, I understand.
 

Just one more thought that I will leave you with.  The Jews consider these feasts as special convocation days, or religious gatherings.   Here I go again.  The Hebrew word for “holy convocation” is mikrah.  This word means a “dress rehearsal”.  So these feasts the Jews were/are doing, are a dress rehearsal for something else.  What in the world does that mean?

 

Well, stay tuned, we will cover that as we go along.