The Lord's Appointed Times: Part 1

The photo to the left is a pie chart of the appointed times of Yahweh. The very first appointed time is the Sabbath day. You can read more on the Sabbath by reading the post called "The Sabbath and God's People." The first feast of the year is celebrated during the Spring season. The Spring season is marked in green on the pie chart. The Spring season begins with Passover or Pesach in Hebrew. This celebration commemorates the Lord's deliverance of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and is also prophetic of our deliverance from sin through Christ. The second feast of Yahweh is Unleavened Bread. Unleavened bread is significant because we leave behind all of the contamination and "fermentation" (meaning of 'leaven' in Hebrew) of the world and focusing on keeping ourselves faithful and obedient to the Lord. Then we have First Fruits. This feast celebrates the harvest that comes when we enter into the Lord's promised blessing. Our first fruit is Christ. He is the first and the last sacrifice for sin. We are the first fruit of that sacrifice. We are the harvest of Christ. After firstfruits, we count 49 days from the sabbath. The fiftieth day is the Shavuot or the Feast of Pentecost. If you would like to read the story of Shavuot or Pentecost, check out these scriptures: Genesis 11, Exodus 32, Numbers 5, and Acts 2. I will go into the amazing story of Pentecost from the beginning to the end in another post. The feast of Pentecost celebrates new life in the Spirit of Torah (teaching and instruction). When we are filled with the Holy Spirit, we have the power and strength to obey all of the Lord's teachings and instructions.

Some of you maybe thinking, what about all the sacrifices and offerings. You don't need to go out and buy a lamb or a bull, all you need to do is honor the Lord by encouraging a brother or sister, and sharing the blessings God has given in your life (i.e., food, drink etc). I will close part 1 with this; at the end of every command concerning a feast the Lord says, "This is to be an everlasting ordinance for you and the generations to come." Are we one of those generations? Christ celebrated with his disciples, and Paul celebrated these feasts thirty years after Christ died. If we are, these feasts are for us today.

To be continued...