The following is a sermon preached at the First Presbyterian Church of Jackson, Mississippi. Please take your copy of God's Word in your hands or turn in one of our pew Bibles to the book of Leviticus chapter 23. We are working our way through Leviticus here on Sunday mornings. We are seeing the gospel in the rituals and feasts and celebrations of of ancient Israel. Leviticus 23 provides an overview of the seven great feasts that regulated the rhythms of ancient Israel's national and religious life. And by governing the rhythms of their lives, God was teaching His people important lessons about life lived in the grip of His redeeming grace. I want to highlight two themes for you in particular from this chapter. First, these festivals are designed to teach us about the gospel rest we must enjoy. The gospel rest we must enjoy. And secondly, they teach us about the gospel story we must remember. The gospel rest we must enjoy, and the gospel story we must remember. Before we read a few portions, we won't read the whole chapter, a few portions of Leviticus 23 together, let's bow our heads and ask for the Lord's help and blessing. Let us all pray. Lord our God, we have Your Word open before us as our hearts and lives are open to Your gaze. And we ask You, please, by the power and work of the Holy Spirit, that You would take even this culturally distant and alien portion of Your Word and bring it to bear upon our hearts. Show us the way in which You would have us walk. Point us especially to Your Son, our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. Draw us back to Him. Preach Him to our hearts. For Your own honor and glory we pray. Amen. Leviticus 23 at verse 1. This is the Word of God. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying, Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, that you shall proclaim as holy convocations. They are my appointed feasts. Six days shall work be done. But on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places. These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, the holy convocations which you shall proclaim at the time appointed for them. In the first month, on the 14th day of the month at twilight is the Lord's Passover. And on the 15th day of the same month is the feast of unleavened bread to the Lord. For seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall have a holy convocation. You shall do no ordinary work, but you shall present a food offering to the Lord for seven days. On the seventh day is a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. And then let me summarize what we find in the verses that follow. In verses 9 through 14, we have the festival of firstfruits, waving sheaves of grain before the Lord in the tabernacle to mark the beginning of the harvest, and then the Feast of Weeks in verses 15 through 22, also known as the festival of Pentecost. Seven weeks later, marking the end of the harvest, Then in 23 through 26, the Feast of Trumpets, which is known by Jews today as Rosh Hashanah, the New Year celebration. Then in 25 through 32, the Day of Atonement, which we studied in much more detail when we considered chapter 16. where atonement is made for the sin of Israel. Then in 33 through 44, the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles, where the Israelites remembered that they themselves had to live in tents in the wilderness by constructing booths or tents to live in in the city of Jerusalem. Now, if you look back at verses 37 and 38, we have a summary statement, and that's where we'll conclude our reading at verse 37. These are the appointed feasts of the Lord, which you shall proclaim as times of holy convocation, for presenting to the Lord food offerings and burnt offerings and grain offerings, sacrifices and drink offerings, each on its proper day, besides the Lord's Sabbaths and besides your gifts and besides all your vow offerings and besides all your freewill offerings which you give to the Lord. Amen. And we praise God for His holy, inerrant Word. Now, I don't know about you, but I use an online calendar that is linked to my email and to various efficiency tools that I use, and it's shared with my wife and with Beth, my assistant. But for David Felker and for all the boomers in the room who still use paper planners, you'll notice, you will have seen in your calendar or your paper planner, already sort of preloaded into your calendar are all the holidays, right? There are civic holidays, Veterans Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, President's Day, Martin Luther King Day. There are cultural holidays. Mother's Day, Valentine's Day, religious holidays, Christmas Eve, Christmas, Easter, and so on. Leviticus 23 is a kind of prepackaged calendar of holidays for ancient Israel. There are seven, we've just seen them, listed in verses 4 through 43, Passover, unleavened bread, firstfruits, weeks, trumpets, the Day of Atonement, and the Feast of Booths or Tabernacles. Unlike the various holidays in our own calendars, the calendars of ancient Israel have a pedagogical function. That is to say, this is a teaching tool. It is training the people of God in vital gospel truth. But if we're going to grasp the lessons that Israel's holiday calendar is intended to teach, we actually have to begin not with the annual rhythm of yearly festival days, but with the weekly rhythm of the Sabbath day. You'll notice in verses 1 through 3 that that is where Moses begins as he lays out Israel's schedule of national holidays. Essentially, He repeats the fourth commandment, albeit in a somewhat abbreviated form. Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day is a Sabbath of solemn rest, a holy convocation. You shall do no work. It is a Sabbath to the Lord in all your dwelling places. And so here's the first thing I want us to consider as we study this chapter together, the gospel rest we must enjoy. Now, as I read through this chapter, I had the song from Sesame Street running through my head. One of these things is not like the others. You remember that? One of these things is not like the others. One of these various sacred days is not like the rest. We can group all the festivals that follow verse 3 together But the Sabbath day, in verse 3, stands as the foundation, the starting point for all the others. So in verse 8, The Feast of Unleavened Bread climaxes on the seventh day, the Sabbath, with a holy convocation and assembly for worship. In verse 11, the Feast of Firstfruits was celebrated on the day after the Sabbath. In verses 15 and 16, the timing of the Feast of Weeks also called Pentecost, was calculated by the passage of seven weeks from the Sabbath after the Festival of Firstfruits. Fifty days were to be counted from that point, hence the Greek name for this festival, Pentecost, from the word for fifty. Fifty days were to be counted up to the day after the seventh Sabbath. The Festival of Trumpets was held on the seventh month of the year in verse 24, as was the Day of Atonement in 27, the Festival of Booths or Tabernacles in verse 34. The Day of Atonement, you'll notice in verse 32, was to be observed itself as a kind of special additional Sabbath, as was the Festival of Booths, which lasted a whole week from one Sabbath to the next, with the eighth day also counting as an extra Sabbath in verse 39. The Sabbath day serves as a kind of template for the whole calendar. Each of the feasts was calculated by the Sabbath and were observed as themselves as sort of additional Sabbath days. The Sabbath was mirrored in the seventh month of each Hebrew calendar. And as we'll see in a few weeks when we come to chapter 25, it appears again in a cycle of seven weeks of seven years, with the fiftieth year, the year of Jubilee, serving as a kind of sabbatical year. The importance, the meaning of the Sabbath day was being underscored and illustrated and reinforced and applied at every point along the way in Israel's national calendar of festivals and celebrations, right down to the way time itself was calculated in Israel. Now, we know, I hope, that the duty to observe these various Jewish feast days has come to an end for the people of God, because as we're going to see later, the reality to which they were designed to point us has now come in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. But the duty to observe the Sabbath day itself has not ended. One of these days is not like the others. And so we read, for example, in Matthew 12, verse 8, Jesus declared Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath. And in Mark 2, 27, He reminded us that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. When he was saying those things, he wasn't rendering the Sabbath day obsolete. He was clarifying its true nature and purpose, stripping it of all the excessive restrictions that the Pharisees were piling upon it, and he was restoring it to God's original design. The Sabbath was given as a gift of God for our good in every age. And so now, today, along with the church in the New Testament, the day of our holy convocation, our Sabbath day is no longer the seventh day, Saturday, at the end of the creation week, symbolically pointing to an eternal rest that has not yet come, No, now our Sabbath day is the first day of the week, the day on which the light was made and the day that the new creation dawned in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave, who is the light of the world. That's why Acts 20, verse 7 speaks of the church gathering on the first day of the week. 1 Corinthians 16, 2 says we're to set aside a portion of our income as the Lord prospers us on the first day of the week. Revelation 1, 10 speaks of John being in the Spirit on the Lord's day, meaning the first day of the week. in the new covenant age in which we live, the Sabbath falls on the first day of the week because the work is all done. The task is complete. The law has been kept. The probation has been passed, not by any of us, but by the Lord Jesus Christ in our place. Now, we rest upon Christ And he gives us rest as we trust in him. Come to me, he said, all who are weary and heavy laden, and I will give you rest. And resting on him now, we work for the glory of God with cheerful hearts. That's the new pattern now that Jesus has come, the gospel pattern woven right into the rhythm of our week. Now that Jesus has risen in victory from the grave, it's not six days of toil and work in order to rest. No, it is resting on the first day in order to work. We work for God from our grateful rest in Jesus Christ. We do not work in order to earn our rest, our first-day Sabbath. The Lord's Day preaches the good news to us, doesn't it? Every single week, the day itself is a proclamation of good news. It does not say to us, do this and live. Work in order to rest. What does the Sabbath day say to us now? It says the work is all complete. It says, it is finished. Thy works, not mine, O Christ, speak gladness to this heart. They tell me all is done. they bid my fears depart." That is the message of the Sabbath day, now beautified by the obedience and blood of Jesus Christ, stripped of all the extra burdens of Mosaic regulation and freed from every Pharisaical excess. It is a day of rest and gladness. As Christians, we have no scripturally required feast days. None, not Palm Sunday, not Good Friday, not even Easter Sunday. We have no scripturally required feast days, but one alone, the Lord's Day, the day when Jesus Christ broke the bonds of death. and brought life and immortality to light for everyone who trusts in Him. And so we are to call this Sabbath a delight, a day given to us for the nurture and nourishment and blessing and joy of our souls. How are you doing with that? Is the Sabbath a delight to you or a drudgery? Or actually, is it just an irrelevance? You've never even really thought about how you keep the day. How we answer that question, I think, actually, is often a pretty good indicator of our real spiritual health. Is the Sabbath a delight or a drudgery to me? neglect the Sabbath day, and you neglect your own soul. What can I do to rectify that? Suppose I desire to keep the whole day holy and pleasing in God's sight. How can I call the Sabbath a delight? Well, first we should ask ourselves what steps we can take this week to better order our priorities as individuals and as families so that we can be present in worship. That's step one. And let me say while we're on the subject, it is a great help in consecrating the whole day to the Lord and to the welfare of your soul, and not frittering it away on your idle pleasures, to bookend the day with morning and evening worship." If you want to keep the Scriptures and Obey God's command to call the Sabbath a delight. An easy concrete step is to come back to hear the exposition of God's word from 1 John and join in closing out the day with your family, the people of God, in giving thanks to the Lord who has saved you. And then I think you should ask yourself, what steps can I take this week? to reorder my calendar, my priorities, so that I can give myself to the whole business of the Lord's Day. What do I mean by that phrase, the whole business of the Lord's Day? Well, it's more than just showing up in church, isn't it? The day is for rest. Rest well. How can I really rest? The day is for service, serving others. Maybe I'm so busy the rest of the week, but I could stop by the hospital to pay a visit to that dear brother or sister in Christ, or I could place a quick couple of phone calls to check up on someone. I can use the day for service and hospitality. I can open my home and welcome people in and love them and serve them and give myself to them. It's a day for ministry as well as a day for cultivating your own walk. with God. Turn off the TV. Give your brain a rest. Read one of those Christian books, you know, the ones that are piling up on your shelves, that you think look really, really good and you've never had time to actually open. Sunday afternoon, what a great opportunity to grow and learn and tend to the culture of your soul. Please don't squander it. it is such a precious gift. The gospel rest we must enjoy. How are you doing with that? Neglect the Sabbath day and you neglect your own soul. The gospel rest we must enjoy. Secondly, as we survey the feasts of Israel that are built on the foundation of the Sabbath day, I want you to notice what we learn here about the gospel story we must remember. The gospel rest we must enjoy now, the gospel story we must remember. The Feasts of Israel were designed to help the people remember the story, their own story, of God's marvelous redemption. how He provided for them, delivered them from bondage, led them through the wilderness, and brought them into the land of promise. These seven feasts, they're like a well-cut diamond with seven facets. As you turn it, each one shines with a new beauty, showing us some new dimension of the glory and fullness of God's grace, ultimately in the provision of His Son, Jesus Christ. And all I really want to do for our remaining time as we prepare to come to the Lord's table especially, which is our great memorial of God's redeeming grace, all I want to do is to turn the diamonds so that we see these seven facets actually of the work of Jesus Christ shining from the feasts of ancient Israel. So look first with me at the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which were celebrated really together in verses 4 through 8. These two feasts remember the exodus. Passover commemorated the terrible night on which the angel of death passed over the children of Israel and destroyed the children of Egypt. The Passover lamb that they were to eat as a festival meal recalled the lamb whose blood on their doorposts preserved them from death. Likewise, the unleavened bread that they were to eat during this season reminded them they'd had no time. for yeast to permeate the dough in order to make risen loaves. They had had to eat unleavened bread because of the exodus. It was an urgent, sudden deliverance, and so they had to leave the land of bondage quickly. You remember, of course, that it was on the Passover that Jesus died. And so 1 Corinthians 5-7 says, Christ, our Passover lamb, has been crucified. We were ransomed, Peter says, not with perishable things, such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like a lamb without blemish or spot. And Jesus Himself told us, I am the bread of life, John 6, 48. He feeds us on our pilgrimage toward the land of promise. Freedom is the great longing of our age, isn't Freedom, we want economic freedom and political freedom, freedom of speech, freedom to be ourselves, freedom to live our best lives. We want to be free. The meaning of the Passover and the unleavened bread celebrations is about the exodus, it's about deliverance from bondage, it's about freedom. Real freedom. True spiritual freedom. The Scriptures are saying true spiritual freedom can only be ours in Jesus Christ alone. Other earthly freedoms have their place, but you can never be truly, deeply, profoundly, lastingly free until you are free from sin and death and judgment by the blood of Jesus Christ, our Passover Lamb. So John 8, 36, Jesus said, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed. Would you say, as you look at your own heart, your own life, that you're really free? Really free. Free indeed. You cannot be free indeed until you are free in Jesus Christ. So Passover, unleavened bread, then there's the Feast of Firstfruits. In verse 11, you'll notice, once the people have come into the Promised Land, at this time they're still on their journey through the wilderness, but once they arrive, then the priest is to take the first sheaves of their first grain harvest and wave them inside the tabernacle, wave them before the Lord. It's a symbolic way of dedicating the whole coming harvest to the Lord their God and acknowledging it all comes from Him. We have the firstfruits, and the same Lord who gave us the firstfruits will surely give us the full harvest yet to come. It's an interesting fact of history that Jesus rose from the dead on the day after the Jewish Sabbath during the Passover week making resurrection Sunday the same day on which the Feast of Firstfruits was celebrated, when the priest waved the sheaves in the temple. That's why in 1 Corinthians 15-20, Paul says, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. And in 1523, he connects, he makes a link between the resurrection of Jesus, the firstfruits, in the middle of history, and our coming resurrection, our own coming resurrection, at the end of the age, the full harvest. Christ, the firstfruits, at his coming, and then at his coming, those who belong to Christ, Paul says, we will be raised. The ceremony of the firstfruits was a symbol of faith that having just begun, the full harvest would soon come. And so the New Testament says the resurrection of Jesus that we commemorate together next Lord's Day. The resurrection of Jesus is only the first fruits of a full harvest in which all who trust in him will one day participate when we are raised incorruptible with resurrection bodies like his own glorious body. When your body lets you down, when it gets old, when it breaks and hurts and struggles, remember that Easter Sunday is the guarantee of the final glorious resurrection that is coming for every true Christian resting upon Christ. One day soon, brothers and sisters, we will be made new. So look forward in faith and press on until the day dawns. But if the firstfruits mark the beginning of the harvest, notice the feast of weeks next, which marked its end in verses 15 through 22. It was held, as we said earlier, 50 days after firstfruits, as a celebration of the full harvest coming at last. We call this feast, we know it by its more familiar name, the Day of Pentecost. And it was on the day of Pentecost, fittingly, that the risen Christ, in Acts chapter 2, poured out the Holy Spirit upon the church, and a great harvest was reaped and gathered in, 3,000 souls believed in the Lord Jesus Christ. A great harvest, of which the resurrection of Jesus was the firstfruits, began that day in Acts chapter 2. And that harvest has continued to be reaped every day since and will continue till it reaches its final consummation at the return of our Savior at the end of the ages. What is this Pentecost, asked one of the church fathers, a man called John Chrysostom. He said, it was the time when the sickle was to be put to the harvest and the ingathering was made. And then he said of Acts chapter 2, here, like the sickle keen-edged, the Spirit came down. Jesus said, John 4, 35, the fields are white unto harvest. That is the age. That's Jesus' description of the age in which we live. This is not midwinter, dry season. This is harvest that we are living in. This is harvest. This is every week is the Feast of Weeks. This is Pentecost, every single Sunday. This is harvest time. And right now, all over the world, the Lord is gathering in the sheaves, men and women, boys and girls from every tribe and language and nation, a great harvest. being gathered until it is at last complete, and that vast assembly which no one can number will be gathered around the throne of God and of the Lamb to sing His praise forever and ever." Given that theme, quite appropriately, notice next comes the Feast of Trumpets in verses 23 through 25. Rosh Hashanah, the head of the year, New Year, The trumpet was sounded to mark a new beginning. 1 Thessalonians 4.16 tells us of a day that is soon coming when the trumpet will sound not by any earthly priest in any earthly temple, but from heaven itself, and the skies will part, and the archangel will shout, and the Lord will come. And that will mark a new year that will never end, a celebration that will leave every firework display in its shade. The Lord will come and all things will be made new. Next in the list is the Day of Atonement, 26 through 32. Literally, it is the Day of Atonements. The plural is there for emphasis, to signal completeness. It's a picture of full, complete, perfect atonement, with nothing lacking for any sinner who needs cleansing. When John the Baptist was baptizing in the Jordan River, he saw Jesus coming, and you remember what he said? Behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. He takes it away. all the sin, full atonement, complete pardon, real cleansing for you, whatever you've done, whoever you are, whatever your sin, however guilt-laden your heart and conscience, Christ is able to make the foulest clean. The blood of Jesus, 1 John 1, 7, the blood of Jesus God's Son cleanses us from all sin, all of it, all of it. So turn to Him in your guilt and need and cry out for mercy. There is atonement, full, complete, comprehensive pardon for you. in him. And finally, there's the festival of booths or tabernacles in 33 through 44, requiring the Israelites to gather branches and to construct booths to live in for one week each year. It was a time in Israel of great celebration and joy, reminding the people they themselves had once to live in tabernacles and booths of their own, temporary shelters as they made their way in pilgrimage through the wilderness to the land of promise. By the time of Jesus, it became a part of this celebration that each day of the feast, the priests would process down to the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, and they would draw water and carry it back to the temple. And then as they chanted Isaiah 12, 3, they'd pour that water down the temple steps, saying, with joy you shall draw water from the wells of salvation. On the last great day of the feast, Jesus stood up, John 7, 37 and 38, as the water poured down the temple steps. And the prophecy of Isaiah was proclaimed. Jesus stood up and said, if anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. I will give you all the satisfaction your heart could ever need. Jesus is the water of life. He gives the water of salvation. He will quench your soul thirst. He will. The seven great feasts, you see, they tell a story. The great story. The gospel story. They show us picture after picture, facet after facet of the diamond of the good news, God's provision for us in His Son, Jesus Christ. These are actually the great themes we should be meditating on and rejoicing over and drinking in as we sit together in a few moments at the table of the Lord, aren't they? Jesus gives us true freedom as our Passover lamb. satisfies our hunger as the bread of life. He's risen from the dead as the firstfruits and the guarantee that we shall one day be like Him with a glorious resurrection of our own. Jesus pours out this Spirit in Pentecostal fullness upon the church, and a great harvest has been being gathered in ever since. Jesus comes to bring in not just a new year, but a new creation one day with the blast of a trumpet full of joy. Jesus makes full atonement, full atonement for every sinner that wants it in Him, and Jesus leads us through the wilderness and satisfies us with the water of life. He gives Himself for the nourishment of your heart. We have a perfect Savior, all-sufficient Savior in Jesus. There's no lack in Jesus. Everything you need is there in Him. Your shattered hopes and empty dreams founder on the rocks of everyday reality. But the gospel story offers solid joys and lasting treasure. to everyone who will turn to Christ. He is the center of Israel's calendar, the focal point of time and eternity. He's God's provision for you. Take Him. Take Him by faith. Feast on Him now by faith. Drink Him in by faith. And may the Lord bless you richly as you do, let us pray. Our God and Father, we praise You that You have made full, complete, perfect provision for believing sinners in Your Son, Jesus Christ. He takes sin and guilt away, paying our price. He gives Himself to sustain us as the bread of heaven and the water of life. He promises by his own resurrection a glorious destiny for us all, how we long for the trumpet to sound and the great day of reunion at last to come. As we gather at your table now, as we think of those who've gone ahead of us, some over the last few days, dear ones that we so love, We rejoice that they are with you in your nearer presence. And we bless you that Christ has triumphed over the grave for them and for us who trust in him. And so we pray as we grieve and rejoice. that You would comfort us, strengthen us, and nourish us by Christ Himself through the ministry of Your Spirit, by the means of grace, for Jesus' sake. Amen.