Feasts of the First Coming

Israel was given appointed times. The dates and the months they usually fall in on our calendar are on Feasts of Israel. This lesson covers which of those times the New Testament treats as filled in the first coming.

Four of them sit in the spring, and the apostles name them. One of them sits in the autumn, and Hebrews still puts the work on the cross, not on a day we are waiting to see. A chart that says "spring fulfilled, fall future" is too clean. The texts are not that chart.

The weekday of the cross is a separate argument. It is walked in The Week of the Cross. This page does not need that fight settled in order to say what feast He filled.

Passover

The fourteenth day of the first month. Leviticus 23:5 A lamb, blood on the door, a night the destroyer passed over. Exodus 12:5-7 Exodus 12:13

Paul does not leave the name in Egypt. Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. 1 Corinthians 5:7 John notes that not one of His bones was broken, which is the rule of the lamb. John 19:36 Exodus 12:46 The Gospel also calls the day of the cross the day of Preparation. How that day is counted against the meal is the weekday argument, and it stays in The Week of the Cross. The name Paul uses does not wait on that count.

The meal He gave the same week is in that shadow. Bread and cup, body and blood, a remembrance until He comes. Luke 22:19-20 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 The feast is redemption by blood. It is not a spring mood.

Unleavened bread

The fifteenth through the twenty-first of the same month. Leviticus 23:6 Seven days, no leaven in the house. They left Egypt in haste, and the bread did not have time to rise. Exodus 12:15 Deuteronomy 16:3

Paul stays in the same paragraph as the Passover line. Clean out the old leaven. Keep the feast, not with the leaven of malice, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. 1 Corinthians 5:7-8 He is not restarting the kitchen law for Corinth. He is saying the Lamb and the unleavened days belong together. A sacrificed Passover and a house that goes back to the lump is not the feast.

His body was in the tomb through those days. The text tells you the timing of the burial. It does not add a verse that says "the burial is the fulfillment of unleavened bread" in the way Paul says "our Passover." Keep the strength where the apostle put it. The application is a holy life. The history is that He was dead, and He did not stay dead.

Firstfruits

In the week of unleavened bread, the first sheaf is waved, and no one eats the new grain until that wave. The day is "the day after the Sabbath." Leviticus 23:10-14

Which Sabbath is the open question, and it changes the date. One reading, the one that became the usual Jewish count, takes the Sabbath as the first day of the feast and waves the sheaf on the sixteenth of Nisan. Another reading, the one the Sadducees held, takes the weekly Sabbath and waves the sheaf on the Sunday after it. Both readings are old. Leviticus does not pause to settle the argument.

What Paul settles is the person. Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 1 Corinthians 15:20 As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive, each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then those who belong to Him at His coming. 1 Corinthians 15:22-23

The sheaf is not the whole field. It is the first of the field, and it pledges the rest. He is raised. The harvest of His people is not a guess. The day of the week in Israel's argument can stay disputed. The resurrection on the first day of the week is what the Gospels tell. Matthew 28:1 Luke 24:1

Pentecost, the Feast of Weeks

Count fifty days from that sheaf. Leviticus 23:15-16 In the fixed count the day is the sixth of Sivan. On our calendar it is usually May or June. Two loaves are waved, baked with leaven, the end of the wheat harvest. Leviticus 23:17

Luke does not treat the day as a coincidence he forgot to mention. When the day of Pentecost arrived, they were all together, and the Spirit came. Acts 2:1-4 Peter stands up and says this is what was spoken by Joel. Acts 2:16 The nations hear in their own languages. About three thousand are added. Acts 2:41

The church has read the feast filled, not cancelled. Firstfruits of a people, after the Firstfruits of the Son. The leaven in the two loaves is in the law's own rite. Do not force it into a sermon the text does not preach. The day Luke names is enough.

The Day of Atonement

This one is not in the spring. It is the tenth day of the seventh month. Leviticus 23:27 Blood is taken inside the veil. One goat is killed. One goat carries the sins away, alive. The people afflict themselves. Leviticus 16:15-22

Hebrews reads that day as the shape of what Christ has already done. The high priest went in every year with blood not his own. Christ entered once for all, by His own blood. Hebrews 9:7 Hebrews 9:12 He offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, and sat down. Hebrews 10:12 Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. Hebrews 10:18

So the autumn date does not make the work future. The copy was future until He came. The copy has given way. A reader who still looks for a day when Israel mourns and is gathered is reading a different set of texts, and that suspicion is in the other lesson. It is not a second goat. Hebrews does not leave room for another offering.

Two that are named, and not a calendar

The weekly Sabbath is a sign, not a month. Paul calls sabbaths a shadow of what was to come, and the substance is Christ. Colossians 2:16-17 Hebrews speaks of a rest that remains, and of a today in which to enter it. Hebrews 4:8-9 How much of the seventh day still binds the church is a long dispute. The card on the reference says so. This lesson will not close it. The rest He gives is not a hobby. Matthew 11:28

The Jubilee is a year, not a feast week. Liberty is proclaimed, land returns, debts let go, and the trumpet is on the Day of Atonement. Leviticus 25:9-10 In Nazareth He reads the liberty of Isaiah and sits down. Today this Scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. Luke 4:18-21 That "today" is the first coming. Whether a future year still returns land is the debated part, and it does not unsay Nazareth.

What this page is not saying

Trumpets and Booths are on the same list in Leviticus. The apostles do not say "this feast has been filled" about them in the way they speak of Passover, firstfruits, and Pentecost. People suspect those of a day still ahead. Those are taken up in Feasts and the Second Coming.

Purim and Dedication are later. He is in the temple at Dedication, and He says He and the Father are one. John 10:22-30 That is a claim at a feast. It is not the feast itself being fulfilled.