Jesus — and the Old Testament Feasts

 

 

READ Numbers 29–32

Last night I dreamed of attending a huge banquet. A group that size is usually noisy but this one was quiet. The calm conversations were so remarkable that I called aside their employer (it was a company banquet) and told him how impressed I was. He was surprised and said this was normal behavior for his people.

When I read today’s chapters in Numbers, I wondered if my dream was about the people of God feasting with the Lord simply because the noise level was so different from the normal bantering at most parties. Not that the people of God never make noise!

Yesterday’s reading started with describing the offerings required when God’s people congregated to celebrate God’s goodness. Today’s reading starts with more like it. First is the Feast of Trumpets. The people were to abstain from ordinary work, blow trumpets and offer bulls, rams and male lambs without blemish. This reminds me of the one perfect offering that Christians celebrate — Jesus at Calvary. It may even point to that great feast we will celebrate with Him in eternity — the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

The second celebration is described for the Day of Atonement: “On the fifteenth day of the seventh month you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall keep a feast to the Lord seven days. And you shall offer a burnt offering, a food offering, with a pleasing aroma to the Lord, thirteen bulls from the herd, two rams, fourteen male lambs a year old; they shall be without blemish . . .  (Numbers 29:12–13) They did this to remind them how the sacrifices atoned for their sin and reminds me again of Jesus atoning for our sin with His offering.

Another celebration not mentioned here is the Passover Feast, another reminder of how the Lord brought His people out of bondage in Egypt after the angel of death took all the firstborn in that land — passing over those homes that had a lamb’s blood on the door frame. Now we celebrate that Jesus atoned for our sin in the Lord’s Supper or Holy Communion.

For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when he was betrayed took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes. (1 Corinthians 11:23–26)

I’m thinking how Jesus was declared the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” by John the Baptist. This is a reference to the Passover lamb, but also points to Jesus presented as the Lamb in Jerusalem on the same day the Jewish nation offered the Passover sacrifice. Not a coincidence!

The reading also speaks of the Feast of Booths, a huge and lengthy time of feasting and offerings made “in addition to your vow offerings and your freewill offerings, for your burnt offerings, and for your grain offerings, and for your drink offerings, and for your peace offerings.” (Numbers 29)

All this speaks to me: Don’t ever forget that I am a sinful person and that Jesus’ sacrifice has paid my debt and I am now a redeemed person! I can celebrate quietly or noisily — with all God’s people.

This reading has a short mention of the spoils of war that the people were allowed to keep. It reminded me of the way Jesus will ‘judge’ what we have done. The OT warriors could keep “only the gold, the silver, the bronze, the iron, the tin, and the lead, everything that can stand the fire” and what could not stand fire had to pass through water. (Numbers 31:21–23) The NT says:

Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— each one’s work will become manifest, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each one has done. If the work that anyone has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire. (1 Corinthians 3:12–15)

And the stuff that does not pass that test? Is it not covered by the blood and demonstrated as buried with Christ in the waters of baptism? This part of Numbers may not be an intentional reference to what God will reward in my life — or to signify what has been buried with Him in baptism, but it does remind me of what Jesus has done in my salvation. Like my dream, the wonder of His kingdom is expressed in the wonders of what He did thousands of years ago for His people. I am blessed. And one day there will be a feast like no other and a Host at that feast that smiles and says, “This is exactly how it should be.”