Jesus Fulfills The Feasts - Part 2 Series

Seeing the Reality through the Shadows

Jesus Fulfills the Feasts – Part 2

Colossians 2:16-17

16 Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. 17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

Intro

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I have to tell you that this series so far for me, preparing for it, preaching it, has been transformational to me and to my faith.

Last week, we started out talking about doubts that we all have at times about Christianity and how those doubts can be overcome when we look at how God has been orchestrating history and how we can see His work through the shadows of History, and how He has fulfilled through Jesus, the Old Testament feasts that were only a shadow of the things to come.

This week we are going to be addressing the doubts we may have about Jesus coming back and God’s plan for the future.

We may believe God is real, but is Jesus really coming back? Have we misunderstood Scripture? How can we know?

Well, Jesus is coming back. He has told us in His word.

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John 14:3

3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.

Acts 1:10-11

10 They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. 11 "Men of Galilee," they said, "why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven."

He is coming back.

But I believe that as we look at the remaining feasts of the Old Testament, we can again see the reality of His return through the shadows of the feasts.

That is what we are going to look at today and to start I want to recap briefly what we saw last week.

The Spring Feasts

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We saw that the first 4 feasts of Israel were a shadow of the future that Jesus fulfilled in his first coming. We saw that God is the God of all of history ordaining the way of salvation through Jesus from before the foundations of the world. Christianity was not just some plan B that God came up with because the Old Covenant did not work out. We saw that

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Jesus fulfilled the Passover as our Passover Lamb,

that He fulfilled the feast of Unleavened bread by taking our Sin on Himself and removing it from us by entering the tomb,

that He fulfilled the feast of First Fruits by being the first fruits of the resurrection from the dead through His resurrection, and

that He fulfilled Pentecost by sending the Holy Spirit with the beginning of the harvest and writing the law on our hearts!

All of these occurred on the exact day that Israel was celebrating those spring feasts!

The Fall Feasts of Israel

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So now, let’s turn to the Fall Feasts and see what these remaining feasts are all about and then we will see what they were shadows of.

The first of the Fall feasts is

The Feast of Trumpets

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Known today as Rosh Hashanah. It actually means the “Head of the Year.”

It is the Jewish New Year and we see God give the command for this day in

Leviticus 23:23-25

23 The Lord said to Moses, 24 "Say to the Israelites: 'On the first day of the seventh month you are to have a day of rest, a sacred assembly commemorated with trumpet blasts. 25 Do no regular work, but present an offering made to the Lord by fire.'"

The Central observance of the Feast of Trumpets is the sounding of the shofar, the ram’s horn, a trumpet like instrument.

It ushers in what is known as the Days of Awe or Days of Repentance.

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For 10 days after Rosh Hashanah, after the blowing of the trumpet, the Jews will consider and recognize their sin from the previous year and repent of that sin, turning to the Lord for forgiveness.

Transition

Following these 10 days comes the next Feast day and that is

The Day of Atonement

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It is known today as Yom Kippur, which means Day of Atonement.

We see God give the command for this in the verses directly following what we just read in

Leviticus 23:26-28, 31-32

26 The Lord said to Moses, 27 "The tenth day of this seventh month is the Day of Atonement. Hold a sacred assembly and deny yourselves, and present an offering made to the Lord by fire. 28 Do no work on that day, because it is the Day of Atonement, when atonement is made for you before the Lord your God… 31 You shall do no work at all. This is to be a lasting ordinance for the generations to come, wherever you live. 32 It is a sabbath of rest for you, and you must deny yourselves. From the evening of the ninth day of the month until the following evening you are to observe your sabbath."