THE FEASTS OF ISRAEL ARE A GOSPEL FEAST.
According to Jesus Himself all the Law and the Prophets and the Writings speak of Him (Luke 24:44). When we come to the feasts celebrated by ancient Israel we would expect them to be a pictorial history of the Messiah and His work. Why else would they have been given had not this been their purpose? Tucked away in Paul’s defense of the doctrine of the gospel in First Corinthians 15 is a subtle but clear reference to the feasts of ancient Israel as they frame the actual events of the gospel. Whether Paul purposely followed this scheme or not will never be known. So saturated was his mind with Old Testament patterns that he may have subconsciously used the feasts as the framework for his delineation of the gospel events.
In order to track with the apostle we will look at three portions of this chapter.
“For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep” (vss 3-6).
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming. Then comes the end, when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father, when He puts an end to all rule and all authority and power” (vss 20-24).
“Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed— in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed” (vss 51-52).
Embedded in this text are five of the sacred Jewish feasts. They are in order: (1) Passover (2) The Day of Sabbath Rest (3) Feast of Firstfruits (4) Feast of Pentecost and (5) Feast of Trumpets. We find the feasts outlined outlined in the Book of Leviticus in the twenty third chapter. They are described as follows:
“These are the feasts of the Lord, holy convocations which you shall proclaim at their appointed times. On the fourteenth day of the first month at twilight is the Lord’s Passover. And on the fifteenth day of the same month is the Feast of Unleavened Bread to the Lord; seven days you must eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it. But you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord for seven days. The seventh day shall be a holy convocation; you shall do no customary work on it” (4-8).
“And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, and say to them: ‘When you come into the land which I give to you, and reap its harvest, then you shall bring a sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest. He shall wave the sheaf before the Lord, to be accepted on your behalf; on the day after the Sabbath the priest shall wave it. And you shall offer on that day, when you wave the sheaf, a male lamb of the first year, without blemish, as a burnt offering to the Lord. Its grain offering shall be two-tenths of an ephah of fine flour mixed with oil, an offering made by fire to the Lord, for a sweet aroma; and its drink offering shall be of wine, one-fourth of a hin. You shall eat neither bread nor parched grain nor fresh grain until the same day that you have brought an offering to your God; it shall be a statute forever throughout your generations in all your dwellings’” (9-14).
‘And you shall count for yourselves from the day after the Sabbath, from the day that you brought the sheaf of the wave offering: seven Sabbaths shall be completed. Count fifty days to the day after the seventh Sabbath; then you shall offer a new grain offering to the Lord. You shall bring from your dwellings two wave loaves of two-tenths of an ephah. They shall be of fine flour; they shall be baked with leaven. They are the firstfruits to the Lord. And you shall offer with the bread seven lambs of the first year, without blemish, one young bull, and two rams. They shall be as a burnt offering to the Lord, with their grain offering and their drink offerings, an offering made by fire for a sweet aroma to the Lord. Then you shall sacrifice one kid of the goats as a sin offering, and two male lambs of the first year as a sacrifice of a peace offering. 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. And you shall proclaim on the same day that it is a holy convocation to you. You shall do no customary work on it. It shall be a statute forever in all your dwellings throughout your generations’ (15-21).
“And Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, ‘Speak to the children of Israel, saying: “In the seventh month, on the first day of the month, you shall have a sabbath-rest, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, a holy convocation. You shall do no customary work on it; and you shall offer an offering made by fire to the Lord”’ ” (23-25).
The first feast that Paul alludes to is the Passover. It is the first of the feasts mentioned in Leviticus 23 verses 4-8. This feast is the beginning of months for the Jews (Ex 12:2). It is the foundational feast, the one upon which all the others find their meaning. We remember that the Passover was the commemoration of Israel’s escape from the iron furnace of Egypt. During the night of the Passover, the Jews were set free from their captives; the nation was born. Israel’s salvation was grounded in the blood of the pascal lamb slaughtered in order to spare each Jewish household. Here we have a clear foreshadowing of the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. So when Paul speaks about the death of Jesus Christ as according to the Scriptures (vs 3) certainly one of the Old Testament texts he had in mind was the blood of those lambs shed at the Passover. This foundational feast points to foundational truth that Jesus died on a cross for sinners.
Paul speaks next of the burial of Jesus. Some question why he would mention this act. For one, the burial was clear proof that the body of Christ was dead. Romans always made certain of the death of their victims before allowing them to be buried. There is another reason for mentioning this fact however. The feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread concluded with a Holy Sabbath which occurred on the very day between it and the Feast of Firstfruits (vs 11). This day was to be a day of complete rest for all; no work was to be done (vs 7). This, of course, aligns with day of Christ’s burial, or Holy Saturday, the day where Christ lies motionless in that lifeless tomb for an entire day. This gives the burial of Jesus a gospel significance. It was the One day when God truly rested in anticipation of that new creation which would soon spring from the grave.
This prepares the way for Christ’s resurrection, which is represented by the next feast, the Feast of Firstfruits. It is mentioned in Leviticus chapter 23 verses 9-14. Certainly this feast was in Paul’s mind when he mentioned the feast in verses 1 Corinthians 15 verses 20 and 23. Just as the Jews would offer up to God the first of the barley harvest as a token of what was to come, so too Christ was offered up to God as the firstfruits of a great spiritual harvest of souls. This progression of Christ first and many others later is noted in verse 23, “But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.”
That harvest of souls comes in the next feast outlined in Leviticus 23 verses 15 through 21 called the Feast of Weeks or Pentecost. It occurs seven sabbaths or fifty days after the offering of firstfruits (5-16). This feast is fulfilled in the New Covenant at the Day of Pentecost where three thousand souls are saved during the first Christian sermon. Note that Luke makes special note that the long promised coming of the Spirit happened at this very feast (see Lk 2:1), fifty days after Christ’s resurrection. Notice that this feast also features an offering of firstfruits (Lev 23:23). This reminds us that those who first came to know Christ were also called firstfruits as we see in James 1:18. It is quite clear that Paul is closely following the sequence of feast to describe the great events of the gospel. But he is not done.
In the beginning of the seventh month according to Lev 23:23-25 another feast was celebrated called the Feast of Trumpets. A search of the Bible will clearly reveal that the blowing of trumpets heralded the coming of some great event. In the New Covenant this is, of course, the Second Coming of Christ. Paul makes allusion to that in verse 51-52, “We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised incorruptible and we shall be changed.” The sounding of this trumpet concludes the last of the great feasts. Not surprisingly the Second Coming is the last gospel event. In the New Testament the trumpet is always used in conjunction with Christ’s final return. Note 1 Thessalonians 4:16:
“For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God.”
In addition, we all know about the seven trumpets of the book of Revelation (8:2, 6) which lead up to His final appearance and conquest (see 11:15). It is described this way:
“Then the seventh angel sounded: and there were loud voices in heaven saying, ‘The kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.’”
This trumpets signals the end of gospel history. Let us review that history. Christ came to die, that event is pictured in Passover. Christ was buried. That fulfills the Sabbath Day after the Passover in which God rests from His great work of redemption. Then comes the offering of the Feast of Firstfruits, which is the resurrection of the first man of the new humanity, Jesus Christ. Then comes the great harvest of firstfruits fifty days later which is the Feast of Pentecost which happened in history when three thousand souls were saved at the first New Covenant service. And finally, in the autumn of the year comes the Feast of Trumpets, which is the Coming of Jesus in glory to receive His people back to Himself and to put an end to all rebellion.
So we see that even in the feasts of Israel the gospel narrative of God’s redemption of sinners is clearly seen. This fact alone ought to make you bless a God who has at the center of His will the redemption of a lost race. He sent His Son to accomplish that goal. Isn’t that enough evidence to cause you to bow down and worship so great a God?